ESPE Abstracts

Background: Refractory epilepsy (RE) is a neurological disease, which affect relatively 20–30% of epileptic patients. Although, previous studies noted obesity as the leading factor for maladaptive processes for exacerbating chronic diseases such as epilepsy, multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer’s disease. On the other hand, enough endocrine products such as leptin by adipose tissue is effective in epilepsy. We aim to assess the effect of BMI in reducing risk of refractory seizure due to lipoid tissue factors.

Materials and methods: This is a matched population-based cross-sectional case–control study which consisted of cases (patients with refractory epilepsy) and control (healthy children). Data were gathered by a form including demographic characteristics, types of epilepsies, predominant time of epilepsies, therapeutic approach, frequency of epilepsies, time of disease onset, and anthropometric indices. The same group of researchers measured anthropometric indices and transformed them into Z-scores. Data were reported by statistical tests in SPSS 19.

Results: There was no significant difference between sex groups regarding anthropometric indices (P>0.05) generalized and focal types of epilepsies were noted by 57.5 and 38.75% of patients respectively. Daytime epilepsies happened in 46.25% of patients and 33.75% noted no predominant time for epilepsies. Clinicians indicated poly-therapy for the majority of patients (92.5%) and 36–72 months were the most common onset times for epilepsies.(32.5%). Results showed that lower onset time indicated lower frequency of refractory epilepsies. Although, there was significant difference between Z-height and predominant time of epilepsies but, results showed no significant relation between types of epilepsies and frequency of epilepsies with anthropometric indices (P>0.05). In multivariate regression analysis by backward LR, results noted Z-weight and birth weight as the predicting factors of refractory epilepsies.

Conclusion: According to results, it seems that this effect may be because of leptin. Therefore, researchers recommend further investigations regarding this issue in children with epilepsy.