The EEG and incidence of epilepsy in Down's syndrome

In this series of one hundred and twenty-eight adults with Down's syndrome nearly half (i.e. 42.2 per cent) developed a normal EEG. This would appear to bear out the findings of Gregoziades and Pampiglione (1966) that older children with this syndrome tended to have tracings similar to the normal child. The youngest age group of fifteen to twenty-four years developed a normal tracing in 38.9 per cent of cases. The most frequent abnormality was an excess of theta, in keeping with the suggestion of Godinova and Hirai and Izawa that this was due to immaturity. Neither the presence of congenital heart disease nor diabetes nor intercurrent illness appeared to have any effect on the development of seizures. Epilepsy developed at any time during adult life but, not surprisingly, the five cases developing it had shown sharp or paroxysmal activity previously. Two had suffered from fainting attacks. In one, the diagnosis was confirmed later by a typical grand mal seizure and the other by response to anticonvulsants. Neither suffered from congenital heart disease.