Increased risk of epilepsy in children with Tourette syndrome: A population-based case-control study.
Kids with Tourette syndrome carry an 18-fold spike in epilepsy risk—track seizure signs closely.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Wong et al. (2016) looked at every child with Tourette syndrome in a large insurance database.
They matched each child to a same-age kid without tics, then waited to see who later got epilepsy.
What they found
Kids with Tourette syndrome were 18 times more likely to develop epilepsy than matched peers.
The risk stayed high even after the researchers removed kids who also had ADHD or autism.
How this fits with other research
Wen-Wong et al. (2016) ran the mirror study the same year. They found epilepsy raised tic risk by 8.7 times.
Together the two papers show a two-way street: tics predict seizures and seizures predict tics.
Fisher et al. (2003) and Jaffe et al. (2002) focused only on reducing tics with habit reversal or rewards.
Chin’s team reminds us to look past the tics and watch for silent seizure signs.
Why it matters
If you serve a child with Tourette syndrome, add quick seizure checks to your routine. Ask parents about staring spells, night jerks, or brief confusion. Document any events and refer to neurology early. Early pickup can prevent injury and improve long-term outcomes.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The association between epilepsy and Tourette syndrome has rarely been investigated. In this retrospective cohort study, we analyzed a dataset of 1,000,000 randomly sampled individuals from the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database to determine the risk of epilepsy in children with Tourette syndrome. The study cohort consisted of 1062 patients with Tourette syndrome aged ≤ 18 years, and the control group consisted of three times the number of age- and sex-matched patients without Tourette syndrome, who were insurants, from the same database during the same period. The Tourette syndrome group had an 18.38-fold increased risk of epilepsy than the control group [hazard ratio=18.38, 95% confidence interval (CI)=8.26-40.92; P<0.001]. Even after adjusting for the comorbidities, the risk of epilepsy in the Tourette syndrome group with comorbidities remained high (hazard ratio=16.27, 95% CI=6.26-18.46; P<0.001), indicating that the increased risk was not associated with comorbidities. This population-based retrospective cohort study provides the first and strong evidence that Tourette syndrome is associated with a higher risk of epilepsy. A close follow-up of children with Tourette syndrome for the development of epilepsy is warranted.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2016 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2015.10.005