Abstracts

Rationale: Obesity is an endemic health problem in US population. Two-third are overweight including 35% are obese. There are recent reports that epilepsy patients have similar incidence of obesity as the general population. However there are scare reports of obesity in PNES patients. Therefore we assessed the incidence of obesity in PNES Methods: Retrospective chart reviews of all patients admitted to the EMU between 2010 and 2012 were conducted. Patients with the diagnosis of PNES were ascertained. All patients underwent prolonged video EEG recording to confirm the diagnosis of PNES. Demographic characteristic, body weight and height were collected. The body mass index (BMI) was calculated and defined as follows; BMI between 25-29 as overweight, 30-39 are obese and >40 are very obese.   Results: There were 118 patients with diagnosis of PNES. 66 out of 118 had documented weight and height and were included in the evaluation. There were 29 males with an age range 18 to 64 years and 9 of them were Afro-Americans. There were 37 females with an age range 18 to 70 years and 12 of them were Afro-American. Forty-seven out of 66 patients with PNES were overweight/obese, representing 71% of the sample. Twenty-three patients are overweight representing 34.8%, 16 patients are obese representing 24.1% and 8 are very obese (BMI >40) representing 12.1%. Overall, the occurrence rate of being overweight was more common in Afro-American (42.1%) than Caucasian patients (31.9%). However the combined rate of obese/very obese was significantly higher in Caucasian 40.4% compared to Afro-American 26.3% (P=0.0027). Men were more commonly overweight than women (41.4% vs. 29.7%) however the combined rate of being obese/very obese was more common in women (40.5%) than men (31%).   Conclusions: This study demonstrates that the frequency of being overweight/obese is high in patients with PNES. There is a higher rate of morbid obesity in females, especially Caucasian women,which may give insight into the causation of PNES.