[Psychophysical status of the progeny of men with epilepsy]

The evaluation of health of the offsprings of male epileptics, rarely undertaken as yet, has shown that epileptic seizures occurred in them ten times as frequently as in the general population and threefold as frequently abnormal EEG tracings with burst activity were observed. The finding of retarded mental development in 6% in this group, that is two times as frequently as in the general population, and the presence of minor anomalies in 23% of these children, as well as a slightly greater prevalence of major anomalies (3%) than in the population are the reasons that their health may be regarded as worse than in the general population. Moreover, it was found that the health of the children born after the onset of epilepsy in the father was worse than that of children born before this onset. Another observation was that male epileptics had a statistically significantly greater risk of having offsprings with generally poor health, mental retardation and presence of congenital anomalies, especially in cases with an unfavourable course of the disease, whose offsprings were mentally dull and in the family the socioeconomic conditions were poor. However, relation to the results of investigations of the offsprings of female epileptics often published in the literature, the health state of the offsprings of male epileptics was better.