Heart rate change sign helpful to epilepsy treatment: Japanese researchers

Researchers in Japan have found that epilepsy patients may suffer increased heart rate (HR) before seizures, which is conducive to diagnosis and treatment of the neurological disorders.

One type of epilepsy is mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (mTLE), which includes left mTLE seizures and right mTLE seizures.

A research group led by Nakasato Nobukazu, professor of Tohoku University, collected data of 77 mTLE seizures among 21 patients and analyzed relations between HR and brainwave.

As a result, HR abruptly increased in all 29 right seizures and 42 of 48 left seizures, said the researchers in a report published in the latest online edition of the U.S. journal Neurology.

Onset time of HR increase was on average 11.5 seconds earlier than ictal electroencephalograph (EEG) onset in right seizures, while 9.2 seconds later than that in left seizures, they said.

The researchers concluded that significantly earlier tachycardia in right than left mTLE seizures supports previous hypotheses that the right cerebral hemisphere is dominant in the sympathetic network. No HR change, or delayed tachycardia possibly due to seizure propagation to the right hemisphere, may be a useful lateralizing sign of left mTLE seizures.