Incidence of epilepsy: A systematic review and meta-analysis

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Objective:

To estimate the pooled incidence of epilepsy from published studies and investigate sources of heterogeneity in the estimates.

Methods:

We searched online databases for incidence studies and used meta-analytic methods to analyze the data.

Results:

Thirty-three articles met the entry criteria. The median incidence of epilepsy was 50.4/100,000/year (interquartile range [IQR] 33.6–75.6), while it was 45.0 (IQR 30.3–66.7) for high-income countries and 81.7 (IQR 28.0–239.5) for low- and middle-income countries. Population-based studies had higher incidence estimates than hospital-based studies (p = 0.02) while retrospective study design was associated with lower estimates than prospective studies (p = 0.04).

Conclusion:

We provide data that could potentially be used to assess the burden and analyze the trends in incidence of epilepsy. Our results support the need for large population-based incidence studies of epilepsy.

http://www.neurology.org/cgi/content/short/77/10/1005?rss=1