Clinical characteristics and mode of inheritance of familial focal seizures in Standard Poodles.

OBJECTIVE: To determine clinical characteristics and mode of inheritance of seizures in a family of Standard Poodles. DESIGN: Case series. ANIMALS: 90 Standard Poodles descended from the same maternal bloodline (30 with probable idiopathic epilepsy [PIE] and 60 without any history of seizures). PROCEDURES: Researchers contacted owners to determine whether dogs had ever had any seizures and, if so, the nature of any such seizures and any potential underlying causes. Dogs were considered to have PIE if they were between 6 months and 7.5 years old at the time of seizure onset and had no evidence of any underlying cause. To determine the mode of inheritance, segregation analyses were designed to allow the family to be analyzed as a whole, as opposed to as nuclear families. Competing models of inheritance were compared statistically for their ability to explain the data. RESULTS: Of the dogs with PIE, 28 (93%) had focal onset seizures with or without secondary generalization. Median age of onset was 3.7 years; 6 dogs were > 5 years old at the onset of seizures. Segregation analyses strongly suggested that PIE was inherited as a simple recessive autosomal trait with complete or almost complete penetrance. CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE: Results suggested that in this family of Standard Poodles, PIE was inherited as a simple recessive autosomal trait with complete or almost complete penetrance. Seizures often had focal, as opposed to generalized, onsets, and it was not uncommon for seizures to begin after 5 years of age.

Affect in patients with epilepsy undergoing video/EEG monitoring: retrospective versus momentary assessment and temporal relationship to seizures.

This study was designed to (1) compare retrospective and momentary assessments of mood/affect, and (2) examine the temporal relationship between affect and seizure occurrence. Patients with epilepsy undergoing long-term video/EEG monitoring (LTM) completed an affect rating of how they felt "at that moment" each time a programmed watch beeped (momentary assessment); these ratings were averaged across each patient's hospital stay. Prior to discharge, patients were asked to think back and rate how they felt "during their hospital stay" using the same rating scale (retrospective assessment). Results indicated that patients retrospectively recalled feeling significantly more positive during their LTM than they reported feeling when they were actually undergoing LTM. Among patients who had EEG-verified seizures, momentary assessments were used to compare affect during the interictal periods with affect during the prodromal and postictal periods. The latter two periods were characterized by significantly less activated positive affect than were the interictal periods.

Contributions of disease severity and perceptions of primary and secondary control to the prediction of psychosocial adjustment to Parkinson's disease.

Seventy-four people with Parkinson's disease (PD) completed questionnaires and were interviewed to determine the degree to which the severity of PD and perceptions of primary and secondary control over PD predicted psychosocial adjustment. Significant unique contributions to PD-related participation restrictions were made by disease severity (positive relationship) and perceived internal secondary control (negative relationship). Also, participation restrictions had a significant direct effect, and disease severity and perceived internal secondary control significant indirect effects, on both depressive symptomatology and life satisfaction. Results are consistent with theories that suggest the importance of enhancing internal secondary control processes in situations in which actual control over objective circumstances is limited, such as with chronic and progressive diseases like PD.

Clinical presentations of naturally occurring canine seizures: similarities to human seizures.

The clinical presentations of 119 canine seizures from 41 Standard Poodles and 11 Dalmatians were classified according to a modified version of the International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE) seizure classification system. Standardized use of the ILAE system with dogs not only should facilitate research in veterinary medicine, which has no standard criteria for seizure classification, but also should facilitate comparisons between canine and human seizures. We found that for more than 80% of both breeds, at least some of their seizures had partial onsets. However, because it was common for partial seizures to secondarily generalize, the majority of Poodles (81%) and Dalmatians (91%) experienced at least some generalized seizures. Among partial seizures, complex partial were more frequent than simple partial. For both breeds, two thirds of those with partial onset seizures had exclusively complex partial. Among dogs with primary or secondarily generalized seizures, 80% of both breeds had tonic-clonic seizures.