The short-term prognostic evaluation in first-drug therapy outcome in children with absence epilepsy / 中华实用儿科临床杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To observe the initial therapy outcomes of Valproic acid for childhood absence epilepsy (CAE),and to assess its therapeutic reaction and short-term prognosis,and to investigate the risk factors for initial therapy failure.Methods From January 2010 to December 2015,absence seizures as key words were used to search CAE in the video-electroencephalogram(VEEG) database of Children's Hospital Affiliated to Nanjing Medical University.Sixty-seven children fulfilled the CAE diagnosis criteria of International League Against Epilepsy in 1989.These patients were separated into 2 groups based on the therapy outcome after 6 months,including seizure control failure group and seizure control group.The patients' clinical characteristics and VEEG characteristics were reviewed.The gender,age of seizure onset,a family history of epilepsy or febrile seizures (FS),consistent with 2005 Panayiotopoulos diagnostic criteria,and VEEG findings were analyzed to evaluate the predictive ability of independent variables and the relationship between these features and treatment outcomes by using a stepwise multivariate Logistic regression model.Results The age at seizure onset was (5.89 ± 2.91) years old,and follow up duration was 6 months.Approximately 23 cases (34.3％) of CAE patients had poor response.No statistical correlation was made for gender,age at onset,the occurrence of generalized tonic clonic seizures,and family history of FS or epilepsy between 2 groups (all P ＞0.05).Compared with seizure control group,patients of the seizure control failure group had significantly higher rates of focal epileptic discharge (87.0％ vs.6.8％),higher rates of intermittent photic stimulation (IPS) induced seizures (52.2％ vs.6.8 ％),fewer rates of occipital intermittent delta activity (8.7 ％ vs.77.3 ％),and fewer rates of patients met the new diagnostic criteria proposed by Panayiotopoulos in 2005 (8.7％ vs.88.6％) (all P ＜ 0.001).The presence of occipital intermittent rhythmic delta activity during wake stage and the interictal focal epileptiform discharges on VEEG during sleep stage were significantly associated with the therapy outcomes in a multivariable Logistic regression analysis (OR =133.714,P ＜ 0.05;OR =0.068,P ＜ 0.05).Conclusions The presence of focal epileptiform discharges,and a typical absence induced by IPS are important factors for first-drug treatment failures with CAE,and conversely the occipital intermittent rhythmic delta activities have a good efficacy.There is no statistical correlation between clinical characteristics and treatment outcomes.