Abstracts

Rationale: The association between consanguinity and epilepsy has been evaluated in the past, and was found to be non-significant in children with epilepsy (Daoud et al; 2003), yet the data is scarce regarding this association in adults with epilepsy, for which this study was conducted to evaluate the impact of consanguinity on epilepsy. Methods: This is a six months data collected from the ongoing epilepsy registry in Neurology service, Aseer central hospital, Abha, Saudi Arabia between December 2011 to May 2012. Detailed Patient's demographics were collected for the registry, including the file number, age, gender, age at disease onset, epilepsy risk factors (including family history of epilepsy), brain MRI and routine EEG findings, and current anti-epileptics patient is on. Epilepsy was classified in those patients based on clinical, radiological and electrophysiological data available at time of evaluation. History of parenteral consanguinity (defined as a union between a couple related as second cousin or closer) was obtained for all patients. Results: 420 patients with epilepsy were included until the time of the study. There were 205 men (49%), the mean age at presentation was 27 years (range; 13-85), and the mean age at disease onset was 18.7 years. partial epilepsy was seen in 47% of the patients, generalized epilepsy in 40% and only 13% of the patients had unclassified epilepsy. Consanguinity was seen in 123 patients (29%), and family history of epilepsy was documented in 113 patients (27%). Patients were divided into two groups, based on the presence or absence of parental consanguinity, and further analysis of these groups (table 1) revealed no difference of the distribution of epilepsy classification across the groups (Figure 1) (p value > 0.05). The mean age at presentation and at the disease onset was non-significantly different. Finally, the MRI and EEG findings were also non-discriminating among the groups. Conclusions: Our data showed lack of association between parental consanguinity of first and second-degree relatives and epilepsy classifications in the adult population with epilepsy, particularly with primary generalized epilepsy. There were no other differences observed regarding age at diagnosis or disease onset, and no MRI or EEG findings seen significantly in association to consanguinity. Despite the fact that a high rate of consanguinity is documented in our population, with its known impact on other hereditary diseases, consanguinity has no impact on epilepsy in our population, which still could be explained by heterogeneous etiologies leading to epilepsy. Further studies will be required to assess this association, preferably from areas with high rates of consanguinity.