"Sleep Surge": The impact of sleep onset and offset on epileptiform discharges in idiopathic generalized epilepsies

Abstract

Objective To investigate the impact of sleep onset and offset on the rate of epileptiform discharges (ED) in idiopathic generalized epilepsies (IGE). Methods We studied the temporal distribution of EDs with mixed-effects Poisson regression modeling in a cohort of patients diagnosed with IGE who underwent 24-hour ambulatory electroencephalography (EEG) recordings. We defined the mean number discharges per hour per subject as the mean ED rate. The association between each hour and the mean ED rate was quantified with incidence rate ratio (IRR) as the metric. We calculated the IRR of each hourly block for the total cohort in relation to sleep onset and offset. Finally, we admitted secondary ri..