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. 2022 Jun;131(Pt A):108668.
doi: 10.1016/j.yebeh.2022.108668. Epub 2022 Apr 25.

Quality of life in patients with symptomatic epilepsy due to neurocysticercosis

Willy R Zapata  1 , Susan Y Yang  2 , Javier A Bustos  3 , Isidro Gonzales  4 , Herbert Saavedra  4 , Carolina Guzman  4 , E Javier Pretell  5 , Hector H Garcia  3 ; Cysticercosis Working Group In Peru
Affiliations

Quality of life in patients with symptomatic epilepsy due to neurocysticercosis

Willy R Zapata et al. Epilepsy Behav. 2022 Jun.

Abstract

Background: Neurocysticercosis (NCC) is a common cause of late-onset epilepsy worldwide, but there is still minimal information regarding its impact on a patient's quality of life. This study evaluated quality of life in a series of patients with epilepsy secondary to NCC using the QOLIE (Quality of Life in Epilepsy)-31 questionnaire.

Methodology: This cross-sectional study included 155 Peruvian patients between 16 and 70 years of age with epilepsy due to viable intraparenchymal NCC, who enrolled in two trials of anti-parasitic treatment during the period 2006-2011. The QOLIE-31 questionnaire was applied before the onset of anti-parasitic treatment. The associations between QOLIE-31 scores, sociodemographic characteristics, clinical, and neuroimaging data were analyzed with Kruskal-Wallis test and generalized linear models (GLM).

Results: The average QOLIE-31 score was 55.8 (SD ± 7.6), with 119 individuals (76.8%) scoring in the poor quality-of-life category. Generalized tonic-clonic seizures and secondarily generalized epileptic seizures were associated with a lower QOLIE-31, as well as a low level of education with a value of p = 0.05. There were no associations between QOLIE-31 scores and other variables such as sex, age, antiepileptic medication, number of parasitic cysts, and number of compromised brain regions. On multivariate analysis, a greater number of generalized epileptic seizures maintained a statistically significant association with detrimental QOLIE-31 scores.

Conclusion: Quality of life is affected in NCC, mainly in relation to the number of prior generalized epileptic seizures.

Keywords: Cysticercosis; Epilepsy; Neurocysticercosis; Peru; QOLIE-31 score; Quality of life.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
QOLIE-31 scores per domain in patients with symptomatic epilepsy due to neurocysticercosis
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