Longitudinal Correspondence of Epilepsy and Scalp EEG Fast (40-200 Hz) Oscillations in Pediatric Patients with Tuberous Sclerosis Complex

Introduction: Epilepsy associated with tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) has very complex clinical characteristics. Scalp electroencephalogram (EEG) fast (40-200 Hz) oscillations (FOs) were recently suggested to indicate epilepsy severity. Epileptic FOs may undergo age-dependent longitudinal change in individual patients, however, and the typical pattern of such change is not yet fully clarified. We therefore investigated the age-related correspondence between clinical courses and FOs in pediatric patients with TSC-associated epilepsy.

Subjects And Methods: FOs were semi-automatically detected from scalp sleep EEG data recorded from 23 children (15 boys, 8 girls; initial data obtained at <10 years of age) with TSC-associated epilepsy.

Results: The number of FOs per patient that were associated with spikes was significantly greater than that of FOs unassociated with spikes (median 145 and 5, respectively; p = 0.0001 by the Wilcoxon signed-rank test). In the eight patients who had West syndrome (WS) in infancy, FOs associated with spikes were abundant during the WS period prior to adrenocorticotropic hormone therapy, with significantly greater numbers of FOs compared to the post-WS period (median 242 and 0, respectively; p = 0.0078). As there was no such time-dependent difference regarding FOs unassociated with spikes, FOs associated with spikes were identified as epileptic. The detected FOs included both gamma and ripple oscillations with no consistent age-dependent shifts in dominant frequency. There were no apparent age-related changes in FO duration.

Conclusions: Epileptic scalp FOs are confirmed to correspond to severity of epileptic encephalopathy, particularly in WS, even during the long-term evolutional courses of TSC-associated epilepsy.