English summary: HAS THE INCIDENCE OF EPILEPSY DECREASED IN FINLAND?

Background

Epilepsy is a common neurological disorder but, with the exception of subpopulations, few epidemiological data are available on the incidence of epilepsy in national total populations. There are hardly any data on secular trends in the incidence of epilepsy.

Methods

This study was based on the register data of the Social Insurance Institution kept on non-institutionalized patients granted full-refundable antiepileptic drugs. The study data cover all the age groups of the whole population from 1986-2002. For the study, data were available by year of entering antiepileptic treatment, age group, gender, and geographic area of hospital district.

Results

There was a significant overall decrease in the annual incidence of epilepsy from 71.6/100000 in 1986 to 52.9/100000 in 2002 (Risk ratio 0,86, 95% confidence intervall 0,81-0,92, p<0.0001). While there was a marked decrease in the incidence of epilepsy with onset in childhood (0,77, 0,71-0,84, p<0.0001) and also adults (0,83, 0,77-0,89, p<0.0001), there was an increase during observation period of epilepsy in the elderly (1,18, 1,10-1,26, p<0.0001). The decreased incidence occurred in both men and women and the decrease was largely of a similar magnitude in children and in adults. However, in the elderly, while the trend was of increasing incidence in both men (1,07, 0,99-1,57, p=0.0730) and women (1,25, 1,17-1,36, p<0.0001), the magnitude of the increase was higher in women and the change in the incidence over time was only significant in women.

Conclusions

The incidence of epilepsy has significantly declined in both children and adults with a concurrent increase among the elderly. Further studies may elucidate the precise causes of these temporal changes.