Seizures in Alzheimer disease: clinical and epidemiological data

Alzheimer disease (AD) and epilepsy are disorders commonly seen in the elderly. Many studies have shown that patients with AD are at increased risk for developing seizures and epilepsy. Whereas, patients with specific types of epilepsy, such as temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE), experience some degree of cognitive dysfunction, questions have been raised as to whether these disorders share some underlying pathophysiologic mechanisms or whether one is an epiphenomenon of the other. In this report, we review some of the available clinical and epidemiologic literature on various aspects of the topic of seizures in AD, including seizure rates and types, risk factors for seizures, electroencephalographic findings, treatment options, limitations, and methodological issues. Overall, multiple aspects of the literature on seizures and epilepsy in AD, including diagnosis, risk factors, the role of EEG in diagnosis, and the response to treatment are not clear and suffer from many methodological limitations and gaps.