ABSTRACT

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) causes various neurological manifestations such as seizure and alteration of consciousness. The effect of COVID-19 on epilepsy is limited. For this reason, it was aimed to investigate the effect of COVID-19 on seizure frequency and severity of patients with epilepsy and the effect of COVID-19 treatment on seizures.

Patients followed by the epilepsy outpatient unit were evaluated for COVID-19 between April 2020 and April 2021 and the patients who had COVID-19 were undertaken to the study. The age, gender, epilepsy type, duration of epilepsy, seizures in the past year, comorbidity disease, the date of COVID-19, COVID-19 treatment, inpatient care, need of intensive care, seizures in the meantime, treatment of antiepileptic drugs (AED), and seizure frequency and severity after COVID-19 were evaluated retrospectively.

A total of 141 patients who were diagnosed with COVID-19 were recruited for the study. When evaluating the factors which affect seizure occurrence risk during COVID-19, it was found that COVID-19 treatment protocol did not affect, but the existence of seizure in the past year increased 4.002 times, need for inpatient care increased 12.481 times, and number of AED increased 1.974 times seizure risk. It was found that having seizure during COVID-19 increased after COVID-19 seizure frequency and severity.

As a result, the data of the study showed that the factors which affect having seizure during COVID-19 were inpatient care, the number of AED, and existence of seizure in the past year. The studies which included larger patients and longer follow-up time data are needed to evaluate the longer effect of COVID-19 on epilepsy.

Keywords: Coronavirus disease-19, epilepsy, frequency of seizures, pandemics