Article published by Neurology Advisor
Pregnant women with epilepsy are more likely to have poorer sleep quality during pregnancy and postpartum compared with women with epilepsy who are not pregnant, according to study findings published in Neurology.
Limited research has been conducted how sleep interacts with seizures in pregnant women.
About one-third of people with epilepsy experience seizures during sleep. Sleep deprivation can increase seizures, yet women with epilepsy don’t tend to experience increased seizures during pregnancy. Sleep disturbances are frequent among pregnant women, and epilepsy is the most common neurologic condition pregnant women experience. Poor sleep during pregnancy can increase the risk for poor fetal growth and fetal death.
For the study, researchers took a closer look at how sleep, epilepsy, and pregnancy influence each other.
Healthy pregnant women alone had different sleep quality in pregnancy and postpartum stages (change in mean score, 0.8; 95% CI, 0.2-1.3; P =.01).
Pregnant women with epilepsy only had significantly worse sleep scores during pregnancy compared with healthy pregnant women before researchers adjusted for covariates.