“My Body Is So Sensitive”: Reported Allergies Correlate with Psychogenic Nonepileptic Seizures

The most accurate test for the diagnosis of psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (PNES) is through video-electroencephalographic monitoring. However, several clinical observations, such as duration of seizure and stereotypic events, can be helpful. Now, researchers have retrospectively examined possible correlations between PNES and the number of patient-reported allergies in a database from a large, university-based medical center.

The authors identified 905 cases of PNES (747 of whom also had a diagnosis of epilepsy) and 5187 controls with epilepsy and no PNES and counted the number of self-reported allergies (including medication allergies). However, the PNES group had a greater mean number of prescribed antiepileptic drugs, and a higher per…