title: Psychiatric patients showing irregular beta activities in EEGs and treatment with antiepileptic drugs: a report of 15 cases.
abstract: Fifteen psychiatric cases are reported who were clinically diagnosed as schizophrenic, affective disorders, or neurotic, but resisted standard medication regimens, all showing irregular beta activities on EEGs. The cases tended to display symptoms in common, such as dysphoria, emotional instability or frequent physical complaints. These characteristic symptoms share something mutually with the symptoms shown in some epileptic patients or psychiatric patients with epileptic EEG abnormalities without clinical seizures. Antiepileptic drugs seemed more specifically effective to the above symptoms. More than half of these cases showed improvement on EEG findings such as a decrease in irregular beta activities and an increase in rhythmicity or regularity of alpha activities along with clinical improvement with the administration of adjunctive antiepileptic drugs. These results suggest that the adjunctive administration of antiepileptic drugs to patients with irregular beta activities on EEGs is clinically useful and an EEG examination has much value in psychiatric practice to find the criteria of drug therapy.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neuropsychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, University of Tokyo, Japan.
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Kumagai
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Nagakubo
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Kameyama
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Fukuda
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Shirayama
authors.forename: O
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Saitoh
authors.forename: N
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Anzai
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Niwa
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000927:Anticonvulsants / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D001143:Arousal / Q000187:drug effects; D001611:Beta Rhythm; D004569:Electroencephalography / Q000187:drug effects*; D004827:Epilepsy / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000523:psychology; D005071:Evoked Potentials / Q000187:drug effects; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D019965:Neurocognitive Disorders / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000523:psychology
chemical_list: D000927:Anticonvulsants