الفهرس 
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Abstract
Epilepsy is a chronic neurological disorder accompanied by a wide range of comorbid conditions that can adversely affect the quality of life of patients. Children with epilepsy often exhibit more behavioral problems and psychological disturbances than healthy children. Although sleep disturbance is one of the most common behavioral problems among children with epilepsy, it is frequently overlooked. Many practitioners and even parents may view excessive tiredness as an unavoidable adverse effect of antiepileptic medications. In fact, the relationship between sleep and epilepsy is complex and bidirectional.
Sleep has direct effects on the occurrence of certain seizures and interictal epileptiform discharges. Therefore, sleep deprivation is frequently used in long-term epilepsy monitoring. Epileptic seizures, in turn, may disrupt regulation of the sleep/wake cycle, and antiepileptic medications can affect normal sleep architecture and reduce sleep efficiency.
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the presence of concurrent sleep problems in a group of children with idiopathic epilepsy; those children were attending the neurology outpatient clinic in Alexandria University Children’s Hospital.
We conducted a case-control study of 100 children with epilepsy (aged 3 to 13 years; 57 males, 43 females) and their nearest-aged non-epileptic siblings (aged 3 to 15 years; 45 males, 55 females). Epilepsy was idiopathic generalized in 78 children (78%), and idiopathic focal in 22 (22%), the mean duration was 1.97(±0.92) year.
Sleep behavior questionnaire was used to assess sleep problems in all cases and controls, sleep problems were clustered into 5 factors: bedtime difficulties, parent/child interaction during the night, sleep fragmentation, parasomnias and daytime drowsiness. Evidence of a diagnosis of epilepsy was taken from the medical records. Another data were collected included age, gender, age at onset, duration of illness, types of seizures, seizure frequency and number of antiepileptic drugs.
The study revealed the following:
There was a statistically significant difference between cases and controls regarding all subscales of SBQ; sleep latency (p=0.013), bedtime difficulties (p<0.001), parent/child interaction (p<0.001), sleep fragmentation (p<0.001), parasomnias (p<0.001), daytime drowsiness (p<0.001) and total score (p<0.001).
It was found that the duration of epilepsy, frequency of seizures and interictal EEG have no statistically significant relation with sleep problems.
There was a statistically significant relation between type of epilepsy with parent/child interaction and total score (p=0.015, P=0.034 respectively), while there was no statistical significant relation between type of epilepsy with bedtime difficulties, sleep latency, sleep fragmentation, parasomnias and daytime drowsiness.
It was found that 15% of cases were on polytherapy and 85% on monotherapy. Furthermore, there was a statistically significant relation between the number of AEDs and bedtime difficulties, mean value 10.72(±3.59) and 7.73(±3.43) for monotherapy and polytherapy respectively (P =0.006), while there was no a statistically significant relation with sleep latency, total Score, parent/child interaction, sleep fragmentation, parasomnias and daytime drowsiness.