A Study of Comorbidities Among Epilepsy Patients in Selected Hospitals of Khartoum State, Sudan

Comorbid conditions in epileptic patients depend on many factors like etiology, type of epileptic syndromes, social and environmental factors, which may differ from one region to another, which encourages us to do this study in Sudan, which is one of the low-income countries. Limited information is available regarding this in our region.

This is a hospital-based, prospective, descriptive, and cross-sectional study aimed at determining the common medical, neurological, psychological, and cognitive comorbidities. Data were obtained by interviewing 115 epileptic patients attending the outpatient clinic of the Academic Charity Teaching Hospital and the National Center for Neurological Science using a questionnaire from November 2019 to March 2020.

Out of 115 patients, 52.2% (60/115) were females. The duration of epilepsy ranged from 1 year to 37 years. A high rate of unemployment (72.2%) and a low level of education (36.5%) were observed among epileptic patients in Sudan. The number of comorbidities ranged from one (58.3%) to four (0.9%). Neurological comorbidities (67%) were the commonest, followed by medical (32.2%), psychological (26.1%), and lastly cognitive comorbidities (13%). The most prevalent comorbidities were migraine (33.7%), hypertension (27%), depression (50%), and impaired memory (13%).

This study sheds light on important prognostic factors in epileptic patients, which have not been previously analyzed in other research, particularly in Sudan. It introduces a new perspective on the condition, paving the way for further contributions in future studies.