People with newly treated focal epilepsy and learning difficulties displayed a lower ratio of brain tissue volume to intracranial volume, indicating that developmental factors are a marker of brain pathology associated with neuroanatomical changes in focal epilepsy, according to findings published in Epilepsia. Jacob Pellinen, MD, and colleagues examined data for 391 participants aged 12-60. Using T1-weighted brain MRIs and sequence adaptive multimodal segmentation, the researchers derived a brain tissue volume to intracranial volume ratio to compare with relevant participant characteristics. The findings revealed that learning difficulties were associated with a reduced brain tissue volume to intracranial volume ratio, with a ratio reduction of 0.005 for each reported learning difficulty (P=0.0003). Additionally, the ratio decreased by 0.006 for every 10-year increase in age at MRI and was 0.011 less in men compared with women (P<0.0001). Seizures, employment, education, seizure semiology, and temporal lobe electroencephalographic abnormalities had no impact on brain volume. “Like the general population, there were also independent associations between brain volume, age, and sex in the study population,” Dr. Pellinen and colleagues wrote.
