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Abstract
Recent studies have shown that nutrition is one of the factors affecting intractability of epilepsy in particular, deficiency of omega-3 fatty acids might be an important factor. The aim of this study was to evaluate the serum levels of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) in children with intractable idiopathic epilepsy before and six months after oral PUFAs supplementation (300mg EPA + 700mg DHA/day) and to correlate their serum levels with disease onset, severity, disease duration, AED dose and duration of AEDs as well as the seizure response to the oral supplementation.The study was conducted on 20 children diagnosed as idiopathic epilepsy. They were 10 males, and 10 females with mean age of 7.9±2.36 yrs attending the specialized neurology clinic, Ain Shams University. Ten children suffered localization related epilepsy and ten children with generalized epilepsy syndromes. Twenty apparently healthy age, sex, weight and height matched children were enrolled as controls.Prior to oral PUFAs supplementation, the serum levels of decosapentaenoic acid (DPA) (w3) and decosahexaenoic acid (DHA) (w3) were significantly lower and the serum levels of linolenic acid (ALA) (w3), Eicosapen-taenoic (EPA) (w3) and linoleic acid (LA) (w6) were significantly higher in patients with intractable epilepsy compared to the controls. After omega-3 PUFAs supplementation there was a statistical significant increase in the serum level of DHA (w3) and DPA (w3) in patients compared to controls. When comparing PUFAs levels in the patients’ sera before and after 6 months of oral supplementation, there was a significant decrease in the serum levels of Linolenic acid (ALA) (w3), Eicosapen-taenoic acid (EPA) (w3) and Linoleic acid (LA) (w6); while the levels of docosapentaenoic acid (DPA) (w3) and decosahexaenoic acid (DHA)(w3) showed a statistical significant increase.The changes in the polyunsaturated fatty acid levels were accompanied by a high statistical significant decrease in seizure frequency, seizure duration as well as Chalfont seizures severity scale.There was a significant negative correlation between serum DHA level and the duration of seizures, and a significant positive correlation between serum linoleic acid (w6) level and duration of seizures. There was a significant negative correlation between both serum EPA and DHA levels and Chalfont seizure severity.There was a statistically significant negative correlation between the frequency of seizures and EPA (P<0.05) only.