Telomere shortening in patients with drug-resistant epilepsy

Epilepsy affects about 1 % of the world population. Mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (mTLE) presents with seizures initiated in hippocampus and is the most frequent form of epilepsy. About 30 % of individuals with mTLE do not respond to conventional medications maintaining seizures and consequently new lesions on a daily basis. Treatment-resistant epilepsy has a huge social and individual burden due to impaired quality of life and increased mortality rate. There are many reasons for telomere shortening in individuals with mTLE, such as a chronic mitochondrial oxidative stress and increased levels of pro-inflammatory mediators. In the past 10 years, there was a boom of studies establishing association between telomere length and chronic/complex disorders. Telomeres are essential for the maintenance of genomic integrity. Telomere length has been assumed as a biological marker for stress and cellular ageing. Here we hypothesized that individuals affected with treatment-resistant mTLE would course with a shorter telomere than controls. So, we measured leucocytes telomere length in a sample of 89 individuals, 48 treatment-resistant mTLE compared to 41 healthy controls. As expected, we observed a significant shorter telomere in the peripheral cell leukocytes of treatment-resitant mTLE group. Telomere length was not associated with sex, side of hippocampal sclerosis, family history, etiology of seizures, duration of disease or the Engel score. Our results points towards the need of further investigation to shed light on the relation of telomeres shortening and the outcomes and impacts of epilepsy.