Patterns of daily activity among young people with epilepsy

To: (1) explore how young people with epilepsy spend time on physical activity, screen-time, and sleep in a 24-hour period; (2) compare these findings to young people without epilepsy; and (3) evaluate the findings relative to the Canadian 24-hour movement guidelines for children and youth.

The study is based on Canadian data from the 2013 to 2014 'Health Behaviour in School-aged Children study' (HBSC), a cross-sectional sample of young people aged 10 to 17 years. Three groups participated: 163 young people with epilepsy, 3613 young people with non-neurological conditions, and 18 339 population norms. Self-reported activity data were compared across groups.

Demographics were similar across groups. Young people with epilepsy spent 5.8 hours per week on moderate-to-vigorous physical activity versus 5.6 hours per week in population norms; 32% met the recommended 1 hour or more per day. Screen-time was 8.7 hours per day versus 7.4 hours per day in population norms; only 5.4% met the 2 hours or less per day recommendation. Sleep duration was 10.2 hours per day versus 9.8 hours per day in population norms, and 50.7% met the recommendation. Overall, 25.7% of young people with epilepsy did not meet any of the guidelines, 60.5% met one, 13.5% met two, and 0.3% met all three recommendations; whereas 2.8% of population norms and 2% of young people with non-neurological conditions met all three recommendations.

These data could inform future interventions and alert policy-makers, health care professionals, parents, educators, and advocacy-groups to the low adherence of young people with epilepsy with Canadian guidelines and their risk for poor health.

Young people with epilepsy adhere poorly to Canadian guidelines for daily sleep duration, physical activity, and sedentary screen time. Young people with epilepsy accumulate more screen-time than those with non-neurological conditions or population norms.