title: Psychosocial long-term outcome in juvenile myoclonic epilepsy.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Juvenile myoclonic epilepsy (JME) is a well-defined subsyndrome of idiopathic generalized/genetic epilepsy. It is allegedly related to specific personality characteristics and has been associated with unfavorable social outcome. We aimed to analyze psychosocial outcome in patients with JME. To delineate consequences of the chronic seizure disorder from possible neurobiologic contributions being inherent to the condition itself, we compared social outcome in JME subjects with that of age- and sex-matched control patients with absence epilepsy (AE).
  
  
  METHODS
  Patients with an epilepsy course of at least 20 years were included. All JME and AE patients (n = 41 in each group) answered a structured questionnaire asking about seizures, treatment, and psychosocial variables. In addition, patients with JME were assessed with the Quality of Life in Epilepsy Inventory 31 (QOLIE-31).
  
  
  RESULTS
  In JME, 46.3 years (20-69) after onset of epilepsy, the overall psychosocial long-term outcome was favorable (80.5% of patients had never been unemployed for more than 1 year, 90.2% were well integrated into social context). Quality of life in all inquired subdomains revealed high scores. Compared with AE controls, JME patients did not perform worse regarding psychosocial outcome; rate of university access and degrees in JME patients was even higher (70% vs. 34%, p = 0.001). JME patients showed a high level of quality of life, and current or previous psychiatric comorbidity was associated significantly with lower overall quality of life scores (p = 0.02).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our long-term study on JME patients demonstrated favorable psychosocial outcome that contrasted previous findings. This is the first study to compare social outcome in JME with another genetically determined form of epilepsy. Similar outcomes in JME and AE patients argue against specific neurobiologic alterations in JME that may predispose to social deficits. In JME, reduced quality of life seems to be associated with psychiatric comorbidity.
authors.affiliation: Epilepsy-Center Berlin-Brandenburg, Department of Neurology, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Holtkamp
authors.forename: Philine
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Senf
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kirschbaum
authors.forename: Dieter
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Janz
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D015897:Comorbidity; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D020190:Myoclonic Epilepsy, Juvenile / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000523:psychology*; D010555:Personality Inventory; D011788:Quality of Life; D013995:Time; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Absence epilepsy; Genetic epilepsy; Idiopathic generalized epilepsy; Neurobiological alterations