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. 2023 Oct;123(5):1763-1772.
doi: 10.1007/s13760-022-02054-4. Epub 2022 Jul 30.

Seizures in COVID-19: the relationship between biomarkers and prognosis

Pınar Bengi Boz  1 , Kezban Aslan-Kara  2 , Zeynep Selcan Şanlı  3 , Mehmet Taylan Peköz  2 , Dilek Acar  3 , Hacer Bozdemir  2
Affiliations

Seizures in COVID-19: the relationship between biomarkers and prognosis

Pınar Bengi Boz et al. Acta Neurol Belg. 2023 Oct.

Abstract

Objective: To assess the prevalence of seizure, associated risk factors, and prognosis in patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection and identify predictive biomarkers in SARS-CoV-2 patients with seizure.

Methods: A cohort of 17,806 patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection admitted to two university hospitals in Adana between March 11, 2020 and January 1, 2021 was analyzed retrospectively. The patients' demographic characteristics, laboratory findings, and systemic and neurological symptoms at admission and on the day of seizure onset were evaluated.

Results: Neurological findings were detected in 877 of the 17,806 patients. Of these, 45 patients (0.25%) had seizure (status epilepticus in 4/45 patients, 8.9%). Patients with seizure had a mean age of 55.3 years (range 17-88) and 57.8% were male. Seizure was more common in the 18-44 (24.4%) and ≥ 65 age groups (44.4%) and in those with multiple comorbidity. The case fatality rate for patients with seizure among all SARS-CoV-2 patients was 0.135% (95% CI 80.86-188.71). However, no patient with a previous diagnosis of epilepsy died during SARS-CoV-2 infection. High neutrophil, platelet, and ferritin levels and low lymphocyte and calcium levels on the day of seizure development compared to admission were associated with higher mortality (p = 0.004, 0.008, 0.028, 0003, and 0.002, respectively).

Conclusions: Seizures are not uncommon during SARS-CoV-2 infection, with a higher risk of mortality in older patients and those with higher inflammatory markers.

Keywords: Coronavirus; Mortality; Seizure.

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Conflict of interest statement

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.

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