title: Epilepsy and folic acid.
abstract: With 15 cases of epilepsy as the subject, studies were made of the therapeutic effects of folic acid on psychiatric symptoms and clinical seizures. Folic acid proved effective for a part of chronic and prolonged psychiatric symptoms shown by epileptic patients and brought on slight improvement in hyperexcitability, aggressiveness, bad humor and slowness of psychomotor activities. Improvement in mood was also observed. However, incidence of clinical fits increased in three cases. Electroencephalograms showed the desynchronizing phenomenon following oral administration of folic acid. Appearance or increase of spikes was noted in six cases. The epileptic group showed significantly low folic acid level in both serum and spinal fluid compared with the non-epileptic group. When folic acid was administered orally to the epileptic group, the serum folic acid level increased easily but the folic acid level in spinal fluid hardly increased.
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D004569:Electroencephalography; D004828:Epilepsies, Partial / Q000188:drug therapy*; D004830:Epilepsy, Tonic-Clonic / Q000188:drug therapy*; D005260:Female; D005492:Folic Acid / Q000097:blood / Q000134:cerebrospinal fluid / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000188:drug therapy
chemical_list: D005492:Folic Acid