Obesity in Adults with Epilepsy

Epilepsy News From: Wednesday, August 21, 2013

In the September issue of the journal Epilepsy and Behavior, Drs. Janousek and colleagues from Bethesda, Maryland, present an interesting analysis in which all new patients at their center over a six-year period of time were evaluated for height, weight and body mass index to assess obesity in adults with epilepsy.

  • 554 patients (16-87 years of age) were included with the vast majority having localization-related epilepsy

  • Most of the participants were women 62.7%.

The researchers found:

  • 55.2% of patients were overweight or obese with a BMI of greater than 25 kg/m2

  • 4.3% were morbidly obese with a BMI of 40 kg/m2.

  • Obesity was more common in men than in women and the rate of overweight obesity combined tended to be greater in blacks (67.9%), than whites (51.9%). (There were too few Hispanics and Asians to allow any type of comparison.)

    • There were too few Hispanics and Asians to allow any type of comparison.

  • The obesity rates were higher in patients with refractory than non-refractory epilepsy 36.9% vs. 24.6%.

The researchers concluded:

  • Obesity was more common in patients treated with more than one drug than those treated with a single drug (37.7% vs. 25%).

  • There was no association between obesity and other disease characteristics, such as epilepsy type, duration or etiology.

  • Obesity is common in patients with epilepsy.

Authored by

Joseph I. Sirven MD

Reviewed Date

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Sign Up for Emails

Stay up to date with the latest epilepsy news, stories from the community, and more.