Youths with epilepsy have higher rate of mood disorders

Key takeaways:

• Women and girls were 2.4 times more likely to have a mood disorder compared with men and boys.
• Data show the risk for mood disorders increased with a higher number of risk factors.

LOS ANGELES — Patients with epilepsy aged 16 to 26 years had a higher frequency of comorbid mood disorders compared with the general epilepsy population, underscoring a need to increase psychiatric screening, data show.

“It’s apparent anecdotally that many patients have anxiety and depression, especially in a transition population,” Sarita Maturu, DO, osteopathic physician and clinical associate professor of neurology at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, told Healio at the American Epilepsy Society annual meeting. “Our goal was to identify risk factors and, once we identified those, hopefully we can implement changes for these patients.”

Maturu and colleagues conducted a prospective study to investigate the prevalence of mood disorders in adolescents and young adults with epilepsy compared with the general epilepsy population.

The study included 217 individuals (55.8% female) with epilepsy enrolled at Wexner Medical Center or Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Ohio. All participants were asked to complete the Epilepsy Transition Readiness Assessment Questionnaire (EPI-TRAQ), an assessment tool with scores that range from one to five, from least to most independent. The questionnaire also includes six subscales that measure adherence to certain tasks associated with symptom management and daily living.

Assessment scores, disease-specific characteristics, number and type of antiseizure medications (ASMs) and tracking of comorbid mood disorders were collected for each study enrollee.

A total of 156 participants (50% male) responded positively for mood disorders and 61 (70.5% female) did not. Cognitive impairment was logged in 22 of 61 individuals with a mood disorder and in 48 of 156 persons without.

According to the results, a greater percentage of mood disorders was found within the study population (27.9%) compared with prior data in the general epilepsy population of anxiety (20%) and depression (22%).

The researchers also reported that women and girls were 2.4 times more likely to have a mood disorder compared with men and boys, even when adjusting for age and number of ASMs. Individuals on two or more ASMs were significantly more likely to have a mood disorder (38 of 61, 62.3%) compared with those prescribed none or one ASM (72 of 156, 46.2%)

Data further showed the patients aged 20 years and older were more likely to have anxiety or depression compared with those aged 16 to 19 years. The age range that featured the greatest number with a mood disorder were those aged 20 to 23 years (39.34%), while the counterpart for those without a mood disorder was aged 16 to 19 years (56.4%).

“One last interesting thing is, as [patients’] risk factors increase, [there is] a higher percentage of having anxiety and depression,” Maturu said.

If a participant had zero risk factors, the odds for mood disorders were 7.41%, one risk factor jumped to 18.18%, 35.53% with two risk factors and 48.7% with three risk factors, she said.