ObjectiveExploring the influencing factors of acute phase (≤ 21 days) seizures and epilepsy in patients with Herpes simplex virus encephalitis (HSE) in our hospital, including emergency and inpatient wards, mainly from the perspective of the number of mNGS of Herpes simplex virus (HSV) in cerebrospinal fluid. MethodsFrom January to Octomber 2023, 28 emergency and inpatient patients in our hospital were collected, excepted clinical datas were not detailed. In the end, 24 patients with HSE diagnosed were included in the study, and their clinical datas were collected, including age, gender, acute encephalitis syndrome, the form of the seizure and the number of seizures, time of lumbar puncture, and various indicators of cerebrospinal fluid [pressure, protein, cell count (mononuclear and multinucleated cells), metagenomic Next-generation sequencing (mNGS), neural autoantibodied associated with autoimmune encephalitis], electroencephalogram, cranial imaging examination reports, and treatment plans.ResultsA total of 24 patients were enrolled, including 9 patients with a history of hypertension and 4 patients with a history of diabetes. There were 18 males and 6 females, with an average age of (53.17±17.19) years. The maximum age was 73 years old, and the minimum age was 21 years old. Among the 24 patients, one patient first presented to the local hospital and then transferred to our hospital for lumbar puncture, so the time from the onset of the disease to lumbar puncture was 30 days, and the other patient’s family members refused to complete lumbar puncture at first,so the time of lumbar puncture was 14 days from the onset of the disease. The remaining 22 patients were all completed lumbar puncture within 7 days of onset, and all emergency patients completed lumbar puncture within 24 hours of admission to the Emergency Department. mNGS results: 23 cases were HSV-1, and the remaining 1 case was HSV- 2. There were a total of 6 cases of seizures and epilepy in the acute phase (≤21 days), with focal or generalized seizures or epileptic status as the main form, and 2 cases of seizures occurred. Among these 8 patients, 5 showed lesions in the frontal and temporal lobes on enhanced cranial MRI, while the other 3 showed no specific features. At the same time, mNGS of cerebrospinal fluid suggested that the sequence number of HSV was greater than 3 000 was related with seizures and epilepsy with acute HSE. Conclusion Seizures and epileysy in acute HSE were related with the presences of intracranial cortical involvement,and the number of viral sequences in mNGS was closely related to acute phase seizures and epilepsy.
Patients with autoimmune encephalitis are mainly characterized by behavioral, mental and motor abnormalities, neurological dysfunction, memory deficits and seizures. Different antibody types of autoimmune encephalitis its pathogenesis, clinical characteristics are different, in recent years found immune related epilepsy is closely related to autoimmune encephalitis, based on autoimmune encephalitis type is more, we choose more common autoimmune encephalitis, expounds its characteristics, to help clinical diagnosis.
ObjectiveImpaired breathing during and following seizures is an important cause of sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP), but the network mechanisms by which seizures impair breathing have not been thoroughly investigated. Progress would be greatly facilitated by a model in which breathing could be investigated during seizures in a controlled setting. MethodRecent work with an acute Long-Evans rat model of limbic seizures has demonstrated that depression of brainstem arousal systems may be critical for impaired consciousness during and after seizures. We now utilize the same rat model to investigate breathing during partial seizures with secondary generalization. ResultBreathing is markedly impaired during seizures(P < 0.05;n=21), and that the severity of breathing impairment is strongly correlated with the extent of seizure propagation (Pearson R=-0.73;P < 0.001;n=30). ConclusionSeizure propagation could increase the severity of breathing impairment caused by seizures. Based on these results, we suggest that this animal model would help us to improve understanding of pathways involved in impairment of breathing caused by seizures and this is an important initial step in addressing this significant cause of SUDEP in people living with epilepsy.
ObjectiveTo analyze the clinical characteristics and corresponding genetic features of epilepsy related to fever sensitivity. MethodsRetrospectively review 29 children with epilepsy related to fever sensitivity who were diagnosed and treated in the Department of Pediatric Neurology of the Third Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University from January 2017 to December 2022, with complete clinical data and underwent molecular genetic testing. Fill in the clinical data registration form in detail, and retrospectively summarize their clinical characteristics, electroencephalogram (EEG) manifestations, neuroimaging examinations, the selection of antiepileptic drugs, curative effects, and evaluate and follow up the developmental indicators. ResultsAmong the 29 children with epilepsy related to fever sensitivity, there were 13 males (44.8%) and 16 females (55.2%); 10 cases (34.5%) were Dravet syndrome, 3 cases (10.3%) were genetic epilepsy with febrile seizures plus (GEFS+), and 1 case (3.4%) was PCDH19 gene-related epilepsy. The age of onset ranged from 2 to 25 months. Among them, 19 cases (65.5%) had an onset age of 2 to 12 months, and 10 cases (34.5%) had an onset age greater than 12 months. In 1 case of GEFS+ child, all seizures occurred after fever, and in the other 28 children, afebrile seizures were present. The interval between the first febrile seizure and the appearance of afebrile seizures was 0.09 to 116 months; the age of appearance of afebrile seizures was 5 to 134 months. There were 6 cases (20.7%) with a single seizure type, and 23 cases (79.3%) with 2 or more seizure types. There were 24 cases (82.8%) with generalized tonic-clonic seizures, 9 cases (31.0%) with generalized tonic seizures, 18 cases (62.1%) with focal seizures, 4 cases (13.8%) with absence seizures, and 1 case (3.4%) with spasm seizures. 10 cases (34.5%) of children had status epilepticus, and 13 cases (44.8%) had cluster seizures. 16 cases (55.2%) of children had a positive family history, among which 8 cases (27.6%) had a family history of febrile seizures, and 11 cases (37.9%) had a family history of afebrile seizures/epilepsy; during the initial visit and follow-up, 22 cases (75.9%) were found to have developmental delays of varying degrees. Pathogenic/suspected pathogenic gene variants/copy number variants clearly related to epilepsy were detected in 20 cases, with a detection rate of 68.9%, including SCN1A gene variants (11 cases), GABRB2 gene variants (1 case), GABRG2 gene variants (1 case), PCDH19 gene variants (1 case), SPTBN1 gene variants (c.1081_c.1097delAACTTGGAAGTGCTGCTinsCA, 1 case), ASNS gene variants (c.146G>A, 1 case), copy number variants in the 4p16.3 region (3 cases), and copy number variants in the 16p11.2 region (1 case). Among them, the gene variants of SPTBN1 and ASNS are novel gene variants that have not been previously reported in China for epilepsy related to fever sensitivity. ConclusionEpilepsy related to fever sensitivity mostly occurs in infancy, with diverse seizure patterns, varying degrees of severity of clinical symptoms, often accompanied by status epilepticus and cluster seizures, and mostly combined with developmental delays of varying degrees. This study found that the gene variants of SPTBN1 and ASNS, which have not been previously reported in China, may be rare pathogenic genes for epilepsy related to fever sensitivity.
The deep learning-based automatic detection of epilepsy electroencephalogram (EEG), which can avoid the artificial influence, has attracted much attention, and its effectiveness mainly depends on the deep neural network model. In this paper, an attention-based multi-scale residual network (AMSRN) was proposed in consideration of the multiscale, spatio-temporal characteristics of epilepsy EEG and the information flow among channels, and it was combined with multiscale principal component analysis (MSPCA) to realize the automatic epilepsy detection. Firstly, MSPCA was used for noise reduction and feature enhancement of original epilepsy EEG. Then, we designed the structure and parameters of AMSRN. Among them, the attention module (AM), multiscale convolutional module (MCM), spatio-temporal feature extraction module (STFEM) and classification module (CM) were applied successively to signal reexpression with attention weighted mechanism as well as extraction, fusion and classification for multiscale and spatio-temporal features. Based on the Children’s Hospital Boston-Massachusetts Institute of Technology (CHB-MIT) public dataset, the AMSRN model achieved good results in sensitivity (98.56%), F1 score (98.35%), accuracy (98.41%) and precision (98.43%). The results show that AMSRN can make good use of brain network information flow caused by seizures to enhance the difference among channels, and effectively capture the multiscale and spatio-temporal features of EEG to improve the performance of epilepsy detection.
Objective To explore the damage, damage model and influence factors of the empathy ability on patients with epilepsy by the Chinese version of interpersonal reaction index scale (IRI-C). Methods Eighty-eight non-symptomatic epilepsy patients who were from the First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University and 100 healthy controls were included in the study from March 2015 to January 2016. Patients with serious cognitive impairment and severe anxiety or depression were ruled out through neural psychology background screening (Montreal Cognitive Assessment, Hamilton anxiety and depression scale) due to their influence on empathy scores. Thereafter the empathy ability was compared between epilepsy patients and healthy controls using the IRI-C, and the effect of seizure type on empathy ability was analyzed. According to the epileptic seizure types of generalized tonic-clonic seizure (GTCS), patients were divided into 3 groups: non-GTCS group (simple or complex partial seizure, n=17), pure GTCS group (only primary GTCS attack, n=23) and SGS group (partial onset secondary GTCS,n=48). The control group included 100 healthy participants. In order to ensure the balance of sample size, 30 samples are randomly selected from SGS and control groups respectively for statistical analysis. Then patients were divided in two groups according to whether he/she has complex partial seizure (CPS), and 30 patients in each group. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS18.0 software package. Results ① The total IRI-C Empathy scores, Cognitive empathy (CE) and two factors of the patients in epilepsy group were lower than those in control group (P<0.05), while there was no statistical difference in Emotional Empathy (EE) and two factors between groups (P>0.05). ②ANOVA showed the points of CE (include two factors) and total scores of empathy mean different between the four groups (P<0.05), and EE (include two factors) scores were no statistically significant differences between the four groups (P>0.05). The CE scores were differences between the GTCS group, pure GTCS group and SGS group. The scores of the perspective-taking was statistically significant differences (P<0.05) between the pure GTCS group and the SGS group. The scores of perspective-taking of SGS group were lower than the other groups (P<0.05) . In other words, the scores of the perspective-taking of SGS group were lower than those of the other three groups, and the CE scores were lower than the GTCS group and the control group. ③ The opinion selection, imagination, CE and total empathy score of CPS group were all worse than that of non-CPS group (P<0.05). Conclusions The empathy ability of epilepsy patientswere impaired in CE, but reserved in EE Epileptic subtype CPS and GTCS were risk factors of the decline in empathy ability in epilepsy patients.
ObjectiveTo explore the prognostic value of normal 24 hour video electroencephalography (VEEG) with different frequency on antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) withdrawal in cryptogenic epilepsy patients with three years seizure-free. MethodsA retrospective study was conducted in the Neurology outpatient and the Epilepsy Center of Xi Jing Hospital. The subject who had been seizure free more than 3 years were divided into continual normal twice group and once group according to the nomal frequence of 24 hour VEEG before discontinuation from January 2013 to December 2014, and then followed up to replase or to December 2015. The recurrence and cumulative recurrence rate of the two group after withdrawal AEDs were compared with chi-square or Fisher's exact test and Kaplan-Meier survival curve. A Cox proportional hazard model was used for multivariate analysis to identify the risk factors for seizure recurrence after univariate analysis. P value < 0.05 was considered significant, and all P values were two-tailed. Results95 epilepsy patients with cause unknown between 9 to 45 years old were recruited (63 in normal twice group and 32 in normal once group). The cumulated recurrence rates in continual two normal VEEG group vs one normal VEEG group were 4.8% vs 21.9% (P=0.028), 4.8% vs 25% (P=0.006) and 7.9% vs 25%(P=0.03) at 18 months, 24 months and endpoint following AEDs withdrawal and there was statistically difference between the two groups. Factors associated with increased risk were adolescent onset epilepsy (HR=2.404), history of withdrawal recurrence (HR=7.186) and abnormal VEEG (epileptic-form discharge) (HR=8.222) during or after withdrawal AEDs. The recurrence rate of each group in which abnormal VEEG vs unchanged VEEG during or after withdrawal AEDs was respectively 100% vs 4.92% (P=0.005), 80% vs 19.23%(P=0.009). ConclusionsContinual normal 24h VEEG twice before withdrawal AEDs had higher predicting value of seizure recurrence and it could guide physicians to make the withdrawal decision. Epileptic patients with adolescent onset epilepsy, history of seizure recurrence and abnormal VEEG (epileptic-form discharge) during or after withdrawal AEDs had high risk of replase, especially patients with the presence of VEEG abnormalities is associated with a high probability of seizures occurring. Discontinuate AEDs should be cautious.
ObjectiveTo determine the feasibility as well as the attitudes among caregivers of children and adolescents with epilepsy and adult patients with epilepsy in China towards the use of smart phone applications (apps) for the management of seizures. MethodsThe caregivers of children and adolescents with epilepsy, ages ranging from 0 to 17 years old and adult patients who were more than 18 years old, were enrolled in the study from the Epilepsy Prevention and Cure Center of West China Hospital within the time period from June to December 2015. A questionnaire gauging the attitudes towards using apps for seizure management was administered to the 502 epilepsy patients and 390 caregivers of children and adolescents with epilepsy. ResultsAmong adult patients, they were more likely to use an app in those who were young, lived in cities, had higher education, had a stable employment and had frequent seizures (P=0.002, P<0.001, P=0.001, P<0.001, P=0.01). Among caregivers of children and adolescents with epilepsy, participants were more likely to use an app in those who were male (P=0.03), had a higher education level, a higher annual household income as well as stable job (P<0.001, P<0.001, P=0.02). ConclusionThe results of this study imply a favorable attitude towards the use of apps for seizure management among adult patients and caregivers of children and adolescents with epilepsy. The use of such apps in China represents a promising strategy among caregivers for seizure management.
ObjectiveWe report a special case to explain seizure semiology and epileptogenic network of seizure arising from ventral motor cortex, and to explore Focal cortical dycplasia (FCD) features on MR of epileptic patients with DEPDC5 mutation.MethodsA drug-resistant focal epilepsy patient with DEPDC5 mutation was underwent a detailed presurgical evaluation. The epileptogenic area(EA) was localized with SEEG and removed later by surgery. Related literatures were thoroughly reviewed.ResultsSubtle FCD of ventral branch of inferior precentral sulcus(IPv) on MR(1.5T) was noticed. With SEEG recording, seizure onset zone was detected on IPv with the probable lesion, early spreading to anterior insula, central operculum and ventral precentral gyrus. According to the architectures of ventral motor trend, seizure semiology with evolution from contralateral dystonia to ipsilateral chorea movement could be better comprehended. Seizure was controlled after totally resection on the sites of IPv, anterior insula, and central operculum. Pathological change was FCD type I. Other literatures reported that DEPDC5 mutation related FCD may be located in motor system, and seizure onset could also be in anterior insula cortex besides motor cortex in other SEEG cases.ConclusionsEarly contralateral dystonia and chorea movement could be definite figures of seizure arising from inferior precentral sulcus; DEPDC5 mutation maybe a clue to find subtle FCD in motor cortex.
ObjectiveTo analyze the risk factors for seizures in patients with autoimmune encephalitis (AE) and to assess their predictive value for seizures. MethodsSeventy-four patients with AE from the First Affiliated Hospital of Xinjiang Medical University from January 2016 to March 2023 were collected and divided into seizure group (56 cases) and non-seizure group (18 cases), comparing the general clinical information, laboratory tests and imaging examinations and other related data of the two groups. The risk factors for seizures in AE patients were analyzed by multifactorial logistic regression, and their predictive value was assessed by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. ResultsThe seizure group had a higher proportion of acute onset conditions in the underlying demographics compared with the non-seizure group (P<0.05). Laboratory data showed statistically significant differences in neutrophil count, calcitoninogen, lactate dehydrogenase, C-reactive protein, homocysteine, and interleukin-6 compared between the two groups (all P<0.05). Multi-factor logistic regression analysis of the above differential indicators showed that increased C-reactive protein [Odds ratio (OR)=4.621, 95% CI (1.123, 19.011), P=0.034], high homocysteine [OR=12.309, 95CI (2.217, 68.340), P=0.004] and onset of disease [OR=4.918, 95% CI (1.254, 19.228), P=0.022] were risk factors for seizures in AE patients, and the area under the ROC curve for the combination of the three indicators to predict seizures in AE patients was 0.856 [95% CI (0.746, 0.966)], with a sensitivity of 73.2% and a specificity of 83.3%. ConclusionHigh C-reactive protein, high homocysteine and acute onset are independent risk factors for seizures in patients with AE, and the combination of the three indices can better predict seizure status in patients.