2011/09/19 by Yu‐Tzu Chang, Pei‐Chun Chen, I‐Ju Tsai +5 · 3 citations
Medicine · #Epilepsy research and treatment #Schizophrenia research and treatment #Pharmacological Effects and Toxicity Studies
paper · doi:10.1111/j.1528-1167.2011.03268.x
openalex publication_date 2011/09/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
PURPOSE: Schizophrenia and epilepsy may share a mutual susceptibility. This study examined the bidirectional relation between the two disorders. METHODS: We used claims data obtained from the Taiwan National Health Insurance database to conduct retrospective cohort analyses. Analysis 1 compared 5,195 patients with incident schizophrenia diagnosed in 1999-2008 with 20,776 controls without the disease randomly selected during the same period, frequency matched with sex and age. Analysis 2 comprised a similar method to compare 11,527 patients with newly diagnosed epilepsy with 46,032 randomly selected sex- and age-matched controls. At the end of 2008, analysis 1 measured the incidence and risk of developing epilepsy and analysis 2 measured the incidence and risk of developing schizophrenia. KEY FINDINGS: In analysis 1, the incidence of epilepsy was higher in the schizophrenia cohort than in the nonschizophrenia cohort (6.99 vs. 1.19 per 1,000 person-years) with an adjusted hazard ratio (aHR) of 5.88 [95% confidence interval (CI) 4.71-7.36] for schizophrenia patients. In analysis 2, the incidence of schizophrenia was higher in the epilepsy cohort than in the nonepilepsy comparison cohort (3.53 vs. 0.46 per 1,000 person-years) with an aHR of 7.65 (95% CI 6.04-9.69) for epilepsy patients. The effect of schizophrenia on subsequent epilepsy was greater for women, but the association between epilepsy and elevated incidence of schizophrenia was more pronounced in men. SIGNIFICANCE: We found a strong bidirectional relation between schizophrenia and epilepsy. These two conditions may share common causes. Further studies on the mechanism are required.