Idiopathic Epilepsies - A Population Based Epidemiologic Study

Background: There are only few epidemiological studies regarding epilepsy from this region. The classification of epilepsies has not been adequately stressed in these studies. Objective: To assess the occurrence of idiopathic epilepsies in Punjab (A region situated in the Indo-Gagentic Plains), India. Methods: A door to door, cross - sectional epidemiological survey covering an entire 103693 population residing in 74 contiguous villages situated outside the municipal limits of the District Headquarter town. Survey of all houses was done by general village level workers following which detailed case work up was done by postgraduate physicians. Final case identification was done by neurologists. Results: Active epilepsy (n = 795) and inactive epilepsy (n = 128) comprised 74.78 % and 12.04 % of total number of seizure cases (n = 1063) and 86.13 % and 13.87 % of all epilepsy cases (n = 923) respectively. Non epileptic conditions comprised 11.74 % of total number of seizure cases (n = 1063). Single and febrile seizures were predominant among the non epileptic conditions being 6.2 % and 3.57 % of total number of seizure cases (n = 1063). Active epilepsy cases (n = 795) included electroclinical syndromes and constellations (n = 117, 14.72 %), symptomatic (n = 153, 19.24 %) and probably symptomatic cases (n = 513, 64.53 %) and cases with dual diagnosis (n = 12, 1.51 %). Idiopathic epilepsies (n = 112) consisted of idiopathic generalized epilepsies (n = 111) and benign childhood epilepsy (n = 1). Juvenile myoclonic epilepsy (n = 42) predominated idiopathic generalized epilepsy cases (n = 111). Conclusions: Use of different terminology, definitions and criteria for diagnosis of various types of epilepsy precludes comparison between this study and other studies. This study showed significant variation in juvenile myoclonic epilepsy cases regarding sex distribution, diurnal variation and precipitating factors as compared to other studies. These differences need further confirmation.