Effects of sleep epileptiform discharge on aural pre-attentive processing of children with benign childhood epilepsy with central-temporal spikes / 中华实用儿科临床杂志

Objective To explore the relationship between aural pre-attentive processing and non-rapid eye movement(NREM) sleep interictal epileptiform discharge (IED) in children with benign childhood epilepsy with central-temporal spikes (BECTS),in order to provide objective electrophysiological basis for early assessment of cognitive function lesion of BECTS children and intervention.Methods Twenty-nine children diagnosed as BECTS in the Second Affiliated Hospital of Xinxiang Medical University from February 2012 to November 2015 were selected,including 17 males and 12 females,and they were 4-14 years old with average age of (9.17 ±2.42) years,and the course of disease was 0.5-4.0 years.Twenty healthy children who had hospital routine check-up were selected as healthy control group,containing 14 males and 6 females,and they were 5-13 years old with average age of (8.55 ±3.09) years.Mismatch negativity (MMN) test was carried out in both groups,and the MMN amplitudes and latencies were analyzed.The long-term video electroencephalogram (VEEG) monitoring was conducted in the BECTS group to analyze the discharge phases (waking,sleep),locations and the IED indexes.The intergroup MMN indexes and the correlation between MMN and VEEG in the BECTS group were compared.Results The VEEG showed that the sleep structure of BECTS children did not change obviously.All children's epileptiform discharges were located in the Rolandic area,including 11 cases on the left side,8 cases on the right side,and 10 cases on both sides.Epilepsy discharge time:17 patients showed epileptiform discharges in sleep stages only and 12 patients showed epileptiform discharge in both sleep and waking stages.Epileptiform discharges of the 12 patients increased more significantly in sleep stage than thatin waking stage [(40.24 ± 25.15) times/min vs.(1.92 ± 1.38) times/rmin],and the difference was statistically significant (t =5.270,P =0.000).The sample IED index in stage 1 and 2 of NREM was (40.73 ± 10.69) times/min,in which 2 cases had IED indexes ＜ 5 times/min,the IED indexes of 3 cases ＞ 80 times/min who reached electrical status epilepticus during sleep,and others were 17.2-64.6 times/min.Clinical seizures in sleep stages were monitored in only 4 cases,which showed an electro-clinical segregation phenomenon from large quantities of sleep IED.The MMN amplitude was lower in the BECTS group than that in the healthy control group [(6.06 ± 1.89) μV vs.(7.28 ±1.64) μV],and the difference was statistically significant (t =2.346,P =0.025).Latency of BECTS group was longer than that in the healthy control group [(191.37 ±40.13) ms vs.(179.35 ±39.80) ms],but the difference was not statistically significant(t =1.037,P =0.355).Correlation analysis showed that the MMN amplitude was negatively related to discharge phases (r =-0.407,P ＜ 0.05) and the IED indexes (r =-0.644,P ＜ 0.01),and latency was positively related to the IED indexes (r =0.386,P ＜ 0.05),while the other VEEG indexes were not correlated with MMN.Conclusions The BECTS children have aural pre-attentive processing disturbance,especially unconscious automatic processing ability impairment,which weakenattention switch action of automatic processing switching to focused attention processing and fail to filter irrelevant information effectively.Sleep IED is an important factor in impairing the formation and reinforcement of acoustic discrimination and memory trace,interfering the acquisition,processing,storage and matching of new information,which induces children pre-attentive processing disturbance.The MMN may discover the electrophysiological changes of children pre-attentive processing disturbance in early stage.

Change of interictal epileptiform discharges after antiepiletic drug treatment in childhood epilepsy / 소아과

PURPOSE: Electroencephalography (EEG) findings can play a critical role in a variety of decisions, including initiation and withdrawal of antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) therapy. Interictal epileptiform discharges (IEDs) are predictor of recurrent seizures. We investigated IEDs in EEG after AED therapy and related factors in epileptic children. METHODS: The subjects were 257 children [151 males and 106 females; age, 6.79 (3.40) years; duration of therapy, 2.48 (1.85) years] diagnosed with epilepsy at the Department of Pediatrics, Pusan National University Hospital between January 2001 and December 2007, who received AEDs for more than 6 months. EEG was performed at the intervals of 6-12 months. We divided patients into 4 groups according to IED detection before and after AEDs treatment. Related clinical factors, including gender, age at the start of treatment, seizure type, cause of seizure, AED frequency, seizure control, duration of AED therapy, and background activity were investigated in the 4 groups. RESULTS: Generalized epilepsy was relatively frequen in patients who did not show IEDs in last follow-up EEG. There were no clinically significant differences according to gender, age at the start of treatment, cause of seizure, AED frequency, seizure control, duration of AED medication, and background activity in the 4 groups (P>0.05). CONCLUSION: IEDs changed after AED treatment in one-third of the patients. Generalized epilepsy is positive factor for negative IEDs in last follow-up EEG.

The Effect of Benzathine Penicillin-induced Focal Interictal Epileptiform Discharges on the Expression Patterns of c-JUN Protein in the Rat Brain

BACKGROUND: Immediate early gene (IEG) is supposed to be linked in the continuous seizure induced long-term changes of specific neurons. We tried to investigate the effects of focal interictal epileptiform discharges on the c-JUN expression in the rat brain which is not clearly understood. METHODS:Epidural electrodes were placed on a male Sprague-Dawley weighing 150~230 g and benzathine penicillin (Pc) was applied cortically. After focal interictal epileptiform discharges were successfully identified, EEG was recorded regularly. Cardiac perfusion and extraction of the brain was done at 2, 4, 24 hours and 1 week after the Pc application. Sixteen rats were evenly distributed into 4 groups. Immunocytochemical staining with specific antisera (Santa Cruz) was performed. RESULTS: The epileptiform discharges were induced within an hour after topical Pc applications. At 2 hours after Pc application, c-JUN was moderately expressed in the dentate gyrus (DG) and weakly expressed in the CA3 pyramidal cell, amygdala, pyriform cortex, thalamus, and neocortex. At 4 hours, c-JUN was minimally expressed in DG and other regions. Whereas, at 24 hours, c-JUN was maximally expressed in the DG and also in the CA3 pyramidal cell, amygdala, pyriform cortex, thalamus, and neocortex. One week after Pc application, c-JUN was moderately expressed in the DG and weakly expressed in the CA3 pyramidal cell, amygdala, pyriform cortex, and neocortex. CONCLUSIONS: This data showed that even focal interictal epileptic activity can induce IEG encoded c-JUN protein in the specific distant brain regions of a rat until a late period and the expression pattern showed a synchronous and bimodal pattern.

Lateralizing value of interictal epileptiform discharge in temporal lobe epilepsy

OBJECTIVE & BACKGROUND: There have been reports on the lateralizing value of temporal lobe interictal epileptiform discharge(IED), yet it is a matter of debate till now. We studied our patients focusing on the degree of lateralization by which accurate lateralization was possible and also on the significance of bisynchronous IED(BIED) in the lateralization of temporal lobe epilepsy. METHOD: Fifty two patients were included in the study who were diagnosed as having medial temporal lobe epilepsy through video-EEG monitoring and brain MRI. Twenty four hour sleep-deprived interictal scalp EEG was checked for all of them. After that, we counted the number of independent IED(IIED) and BIED originating from anterior temporal areas. Then we tried to find a reasonable degree of IED above which correct lateralization of epileptogenic area was possible by using brain MRI as a standard. We also tried to find a significance of BIED in the lateralization of temporal lobe epilepsy by comparing the result excluding patients with BIED to that includig patients with BIED. RESULT: Lateralization of IED was over 80% accurate if the cutoff point was set at 70% and patients with BIED were included, but nearly 100% accurate of the cutoff point was set at 80% and patients with BIED were excluded. CONCLUSION: Influence of BIED on the accuracy of lateralization by IED is significant, and if the lateralization of IED is over 80% in patients with no BIED, the chance of true lateralization is very high.