Daytime Sleepiness and Epilepsy: a Pilot Study

As was reported, sleep disorders, excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS) in particular, are frequently manifested in epilepsy; insufficient attention has been devoted to this issue in clinical practice in Georgia. We investigated the frequency of EDS cases among healthy individuals and epilepsy patients. A questionnaire study has been conducted using the Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS). A group of 251 volunteers (mean age 33.4 years), including 135 subjects without epilepsy and 116 outpatients with this diagnosis (cryptogenic focal/idiopathic generalized epilepsy without cognitive or brain abnormalities), completed the above questionnaire. The EDS phenomenon was found in 8.9% of healthy individuals and in 17.2% of the patients with epilepsy. This problem was more frequent among the epilepsy patients treated by antiepileptic drugs (AEDs). The prevalence of EDS was higher among men suffering from epilepsy as compared to women with this disease. In the untreated group of the newly diagnosed epilepsy patients, there were more men with EDS than women having this problem. The difference in the EDS occurrence between the two groups of outpatients, treated and untreated with AEDs was statistically insignificant. Unlike the individuals without epilepsy, a gender difference in terms of the EDS frequency was revealed among the newly diagnosed patients.