Seizure frequency, poor quality of life risk factors for depression in epilepsy patients

SEATTLE — Higher frequency of seizures and relatively poor quality of life are significant risk factors for depression in patients with epilepsy, according to a presentation at the 2022 American Academy of Neurology annual meeting.

“We wanted to study which factors were associated with incidence of depression in our patients with epilepsy,” Maryam Syed, MBBS, a postdoctoral research fellow in neurology at Wayne State University School of Medicine, said.

The population-based, cross-sectional study included 417 patients (68% Black, 57% women), aged 18 years and older, who were treated at the Comprehensive Epilepsy Center at Detroit Medical Center between June 2020 and October 2021.

Participants were asked to complete an online survey and were evaluated via the Neurological Depression Disorder Inventory in Epilepsy (NDDI-E) and patient-weighted Quality of Life in Epilepsy (QOLIE-10-P) scales. Scores greater than 15 on the NDDI-E were considered positive for depression, and scores above the average of 1 to 5.09 on the QOLIE-10-P suggested greater quality-of-life impairment.

Syed and colleagues discovered that patients with higher seizure frequency — more than two seizures per month — had 1.1 times greater depression rates compared with those with fewer than two seizures per month (P < .005). Data also revealed that for every unit increase in the QOLIE-10-P score, a patient’s NDDI-E score increased by a factor of 1.1 (P < .001).

“We had a very diverse patient population, and in terms of gender, we had a really good representation,” Syed said. “We did not find any significant relationship between depression and age, gender, race or number of antiseizure medications used.”