Vestibular Function in Adults With Epilepsy of Unknown Etiology

This study aimed to evaluate vestibular function in adults with chronic epilepsy of unknown etiology in the inter-ictal period.

Epilepsy is a chronic medical disorder. Life-long therapy may be required in one-third of patients. Epilepsy is associated with comorbid somatic conditions which impairs patients' quality of life.

This cross-sectional study included 28 with generalized tonic clonic (GTC) convulsions and 14 and 3 with temporal (TLE) and frontal lobe (FLE) epilepsies with secondary generalization (all were on regular carbamazepine therapy) and 40 healthy control subjects. The patients' mean age was 34.97 ± 7.35 years and the duration of illness was 18.75 ± 7.99 years. All underwent videonystagmography (VNG).

Compared with controls, patients had frequent vestibular symptoms including dizziness (62.22%) (p = 0.0001) and sense of imbalance (44.44%) (p = 0.0001). Eleven patients (24.44%) had central vestibular dysfunction (p = 0.0001); 9 (20%) had mixed vestibular dysfunction and one (2.22%) had peripheral vestibular dysfunction (p = 0.0001). Abnormalities were observed in saccadic (44.4%) and pursuit (42.2%) eye movements, optokinetic nystagmus (42.2%) and positioning/positional (11.11%) and caloric (13.33%) testing. TLE and FLE were associated with more VNG abnormalities than GTC. No significant differences were observed in the demographic and clinical characteristics between patients with and without VNG abnormalities.

Vestibular manifestations are frequent in patients with epilepsy. This may be a result of the permanent damaging effect of chronic epilepsy on the vestibular cortical areas and/or a toxic effect from prolonged carbamazepine therapy on the peripheral and central vestibular systems.