Evaluation of systolic and diastolic cardiac functions and heart rate variability in patients with juvenile myoclonic epilepsy

Abstract

Purpose: To explore if patients with juvenile myoclonic epilepsy (JME) have differences in heart rate variability (HRV) associated with risk of arrhythmias and in systolic and diastolic functions. Method: This single-center prospective study included 50 patients with JME followed up at the out-patient clinic of epilepsy of Antalya Training and Research Hospital’s Neurology Department (34 female, mean age: 26±7.58 years) and 45 healthy controls (30 female, mean age: 26.71±5.14 years). Two patients were excluded since they had hypertension, one patient was excluded due to diabetes mellitus and one patient was excluded due to rheumatic mitral stenosis and 46 patients were included in the study. All patients and controls were evaluated by conventional echocardiography and Tissue Doppler Imaging (TDI) for systolic and diastolic functions (e.g. left ventricular ejection fraction, left ventricle diameters and volumes, deceleration time, pulmonary forward flows) and performing 24-hour holter monitoring to explore time domain (e.g. standard deviation of the normal-to-normal (NN) interval (SDNN), the square root of the mean squared differences of successive NN intervals (RMSSD)) and frequency domain parameters of HRV. Results: There were no significant differences between the holter parameters of the two groups with respect to HRV. Echocardiographic investigation did not reveal any significant differences except the ratio of pulmonary venous systolic and diastolic forward flows to one another (PVS/PVD) (p=0.008). Conclusions: In this study, we did not find anything else about cardiac involvement other than increased ratio of PVS/PVD and also we did not find autonomic dysfunction in patients with JME. This may be due to well seizure control.