Epilepsy in adulthood and elderly, clinical and laboratory study

ABSTRACT

The remarkable increase in seizure onset at adulthood and elderly provokes the interest to understand not only the extent of the problem but also its clinical presentations, etiology and possible biochemical indices and oxidant parameters. For these reasons, all epileptic patients with onset at or after 40 years of age-attending the out clinics of neuropsychiatry in Assiut University Hospital within one year were fully evaluated clinically, radiologically, [especially CT scan] and biochemically [lipogram and oxidant stress]. Prevalence of epilepsy in specific age group [40 years and more] was 11/1000. Most of the patients were of low social strata and 27.3% had consanguineous marriage between parents. Generalized convulsion represents 75.6%, while partial seizures represent 18.2%. Stroke represented the most frequent etiology [60.6%] of epilepsy in this age group, followed by tumors [18.2%]. Variable% of patients with epilepsy in elderly had abnormal changes in lipids, lipoproteins and oxidant stress