ADHD symptoms in Iranian children with epilepsy

Abstract

Background: Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is more frequent in children with epilepsy than in general pediatric population. This neurodevelopmental disorder is treatable behavioral problem with effective pharmacological and behavioral therapies that ignored in this population . The purpose of this study was to evalu-ate ADHD symptoms in Iranian epileptic children. Method : One hundred epileptic children who were refered to governmental neurological clinic were compared with sex and age-matched controls. Clinical evaluation children was done by psychiatrist. We excluded children with mental retardation ,cerebral palsy, other medical and neuro-logical disorder, pervasive developmental disorder and children that taking antiepileptic and other drugs that were associated with ADHD like side effect included theophyline, Phenobarbital,gabapentin ,vigabatrin and topir-amate . After informed consent,Parents of epileptic children completed persian version CSI- 4 test for evaluation of ADHD symptoms in children. The data were transferred to the designed sheets and were analysed by SPSS 19 software. Results: In epileptic patients ,mean age was 7. 47 (SD=0.94) and in normal children was 6.39 (SD=2.41). we found that children with epilepsy had more ADHD symptoms than normal group and statistically significant differences between two groups were found on inattention (p = 0.0001), hyperactivity-impulsivity (p = 0.024) and oppositional behavior (p=0.022) scales by X2 test. Conclusion: In the present study, statistically significant differ-ences between two groups in inattention,hyperactivity-impulsivity and oppositional behavior scales were found.