Profiling memory impairment in people with and without seizures

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  Profiling memory impairment in people with and without seizures

• IRAS ID

  176781

• Contact name

  Markus Reuber

• Contact email

  Markus.Reuber@sth.nhs.uk

• Sponsor organisation

  Sheffield Teaching Hospitals

• Duration of Study in the UK

  0 years, 4 months, 4 days

• Research summary

  Summary of Research
  Memory complaints are common in people with epilepsy and are distressing to patients. Memory problems are multifactorial. Previous studies in patients with epilepsy suggest that the most frequently reported problems were word finding difficulties, followed by “having to go back and check if you have done something” and by misplacing objects. Memory complaints are of great clinical significance in patients with seizures, and may cause more disability and distress than the seizures themselves. The cause of memory complaints are multifactorial, different types of subjective memory complaints may well different causes and require different treatments. At present, no good screening test differentiating between all currently recognized subjective memory problems is available. This is a prospective, descriptive, exploratory study. This study will use questionnaires to ask people attending the seizure clinics, which take place at the Royal Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield, about their memory. Healthy controls will be recruited amongst University of Sheffield staff and amongst accompanying persons in the seizure clinic. This study will build on previous research describing subjective memory complaints in people with epilepsy by using a questionnaire capturing some memory problems not examined in previous studies and by extending the use of the screening questionnaire to people with dissociative seizures (non-epileptic attack disorder).

  Summary of Results
  Memory impairment in people with and without seizure was common

  Unfortunately it was difficult to recruiting patients with Non epileptic attack disorders (NEAD). 93 patients with epilepsy, 20 patients with NEAD, 8 patients with mixed disorder and 61 healthy controls were recruited.

  As hypothesised, seizure patients consistently reported greater memory impairment than controls though this was not always significant. This study also confirmed the contribution of mood disorders to many types of subjective memory impairment. An interesting finding was that mood disorders did not explain all types of memory. Therefore, previous conclusions that subjective memory impairment in epilepsy is wholly caused by mood disorders are not supported by the findings of this project.

  This study compared subjective accelerated forgetting (ALF) impairment in epilepsy and NEAD patients, to evaluate the idea that ALF may be exclusive to epilepsy. The data suggests that ALF is more impaired in NEAD patients, but this did not translate to statistical significance, perhaps due to the small NEAD sample. Furthermore, previous studies have suggested that ALF is epilepsy-specific due to the disruption of memory consolidation by nocturnal seizure activity (Bazil, 2003); this study has found evidence to the contrary, as accounting for depression and comorbid medical conditions completely accounted for the difference in reported ALF between epilepsy patients and controls.

  This study has further clarified that the negative impact of mood disorders extends to cognitive difficulties, for both epilepsy and NEAD patients

  It is encouraged that the self-reported impairment and the contribution of mood disorders to these memory types are re-evaluated in a larger sample of NEAD patients.

• REC name

  North West - Haydock Research Ethics Committee

• REC reference

  15/NW/0221

• Date of REC Opinion

  13 Mar 2015

• REC opinion

  Favourable Opinion