[Epilepsy and chronic Chagas disease]

The epileptic syndrome in chronic Chagas' disease is rarely reported in neurological literature. At the present time many papers have demonstrated that histopathological basis of Chagas' disease is a neuronal destruction. The authors studied 167 epileptic patients; 44 out of them had a chronic form of the disease. It was made a comparison of semiologic data between the two groups, and also the evaluation of the therapeutic results with anticonvulsant drugs. The chagasic patients had the onset of epileptic seizures later than the control group, with great predominance of partial seizures of autonomic type. The neurologic examination and cerebrospinal fluid test revealed moderate rates of disturbances, but not sufficient to characterize a neurologic syndrome. The EEG study was performed in 15 of the 44 cases and revealed a suggestive pattern of a diffuse cerebral damage in half of patients. Anticonvulsant therapy based on use of phenylhydantoin, barbituric acid derivates, primidone and benzodiazepines, showed that control of epileptic seizures in Chagas' diseases is more difficult and requires greater quantities of drugs than in the control group.