Effect of levetiracetam on depression and anxiety in adult epileptic patients

Interictal depression is common in patients with epilepsy and it significantly impacts quality of life. Some studies indicate that levetiracetam (LEV) may have mood stabilizing properties

Non-Epileptic Seizures (NES) are predicted by depressive and dissociative symptoms

OBJECTIVES: (1) To measure depressive and dissociative symptoms in a population of patients with Non-Epileptic Seizures (NES, or pseudo-seizures); (2) To compare NES with Epileptic subjects and Normal controls; (3) To try to define a personality profile specific, or typical, of NES patients. METHODS: Patients: 30 consecutive patients (21 females and 9 males, mean age 32.9+/-11.7 years) with NES diagnosed on clinical basis and confirmed by video-EEG recording; 30 patients with epilepsy matched for age and sex who had presented at least two seizures in the 12 months prior to the study despite pharmacological treatment; 30 Control subjects, healthy volunteers, matched for age and sex. Psychometric evaluation: Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression (HDRS), Dissociative Experience Scale (DES), Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2). Groups were compared by means of one-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) for independent samples, followed by posthoc Tukey HSD Test, with Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons. RESULTS: Depressive and dissociative symptoms showed a significantly higher prevalence in the NES group as compared to Epileptics (p70) of one or more scales. No specific personality profile could be identified for the NES group. CONCLUSIONS: Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that depression and dissociative mechanisms are important precursors to the development and expression of NES

Psicopatologia nell\u2019epilessia e nella pseudoepilessia: risultati preliminari nella nostra esperienza

Pseudoseizures or nonepileptic seizures (NES) are termed "nonepileptic psychogenic seizures" and account for approximately 20% of all intractable seizure disorders. These seizures are often misdiagnosed as true epilepsy, resulting in inappropriate, ineffective and costly treatment of many patients. Nowadays video-EEG monitoring have greatly improved the ability of specialists to correctly distinguish NES from epilepsy. Nevertheless, patients with NES do not always demonstrate obvious psychopathology. The aim of this study is to examine the complexity and severity of psychopathological features of patients with NES, in order to optimize strategies of intervention and appropriate long-term psychological and psychopharmacological treatment for these patients