Epileptic discharges after sleep deprivation from the perspective of sleep

Objective: Sleep deprivation (SD) activates epileptic discharges (ED) in the electroencephalogram (EEG) of patients suffering from focal or generalized epilepsy. Many studies showed correspondingly, that this effect appears most often in Non Rapid Eye Movement sleep (NREM). Most of the authors did not distinguish between different sleep stages and those who did, found inconsistent results. Patients and Methods: Retrospectively, we studied all EEGs after full-night SD in our department from 01/2000 to 06/2006 of patients aged 16 years or older showing EDs (total number of patients n=161; focal epilepsy n=90, gene…