RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Changes in interictal pretreatment and posttreatment EEG in childhood absence epilepsy JF bioRxiv FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory SP 699868 DO 10.1101/699868 A1 Pawel Glaba A1 Miroslaw Latka A1 Małgorzata Krause A1 Marta Kuryło A1 Wojciech Jernajczyk A1 Wojciech Walas A1 Bruce J. West YR 2019 UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/07/11/699868.abstract AB Spike and wave discharges (SWDs) are the characteristic manifestation of childhood absence epilepsy (CAE). It has long been believed that they unpredictably emerge from otherwise almost normal interictal EEG. Herein, we demonstrate that pretreatment closed-eyes theta and beta EEG wavelet powers of CAE patients (20 girls and 10 boys, mean age 7.4 ± 1.9 years) are much higher than those of age-matched controls at multiple sites of 10-20 system. For example, at C4 site, we observed a 91% and 62% increase in power of theta and beta rhythms, respectively. We were able to compare the baseline and posttreatment wavelet power in 16 patients. The pharmacotherapy brought about a statistically significant decrease in delta and theta wavelet power in all the channels, e.g. for C4 the reduction was equal to 45% (delta) and 65% (theta). We also observed a less pronounced attenuation of posttreatment beta rhythm in several channels. We hypothesize that the increased theta and beta powers result from cortical hyperexcitability and propensity for epileptic spikes generation, respectively. We argue that the distinct features of CAE wavelet power spectrum may be used to define an EEG biomarker which could be used for diagnosis and monitoring of patients.