Abstracts

Rationale: Cognitive scores in children with epilepsy (CWE), including IQ scores, are typically not considered in the context of the ability levels of other family members. For example, distance or difference between child-parent intellectual ability could serve as a marker of the impact of a condition and its treatment on a child. This study sought to determine the relationship between parent and child IQ in children with epilepsy compared to healthy controls, and to examine the relationship of these differences to epilepsy syndromes. Methods: Participants were 91 children with recent-onset epilepsy (CWE), 70 healthy cousin controls (HC), and one biological parent per child. The mean age of the CWE and HC groups were 12.3 and 12.8 years. The epilepsy group was composed of children with Idiopathic Generalized Epilepsy (IGE, n=38) and Localization Related Epilepsy (LRE, n=48). Children and parents were administered the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence (WASI). The IQ scores of the CWE were compared to the healthy controls, as were the IQ scores of the parents of the CWE and HC. IQ differences between child-parent pairs were calculated and compared between the CWE and HC groups, and then between the LRE and IGE groups. Results: CWE had a significantly lower mean FSIQ compared to HC (99.5 vs. 107.8, p<.001). In contrast, there was no difference in FSIQ when comparing the parents of CWE to parents of HC (107.6 vs. 109.7). The difference between child and parent IQ was significant in the epilepsy families (99.5 vs. 107.6, p<.001) whereas there was no difference in the FSIQ between HC children and their parents (107.8 vs. 109.7). This difference between parent and child IQ was significantly larger in the CWE group compared to the HC group (p=.046). Examining the epilepsy group further, the difference was significant between children with IGE and their parent (100.5 vs. 107.7, p=.003) as was the difference between children with LRE and their parent (101.3 vs. 106.7, p=.007). Children with IGE did not show a greater FSIQ distance from their parents than children with LRE (7.27 vs. 5.42). Furthermore, IQ distance was not correlated with age or gender.Conclusions: A reliable finding in the neuropsychology of epilepsy is that IQ is lower in CWE compared to controls and population based norms. Consistent with this established literature, the CWE examined here exhibited modest IQ differences compared to controls. This average but significantly lower IQ was not due to lower familial IQ as there was no difference between the parents of CWE and parent of controls. This IQ distance from parent was similar when comparing children with IGE and LRE. Parent-child IQ distance may serve as a useful marker of disorder impact, as a child IQ of 90 will have a different meaning in the context of a similar versus considerably higher parent IQ.