An Investigation and Comparison of the Effect of Sodium Valproate on Electrophysiological Specificities of the Epileptic and Bipolar Patients

Patients with epilepsy and with bipolar mood disorder usually are treated with anticonvulsant drugs; and this is due to similar neurological, electrophysiological, and chemical mechanisms, by which both of the disorders can be described. However, these two types of disorders are classified differently under the titles of either neurological or psychiatric disorders. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of “Sodium Valproate” as an anticonvulsive drug on the electrophysiological signs in the epileptic and bipolar patients.

The study is a quasi-experimental one, in which 40 patients with temporal lobe epilepsy, and 40 patients with bipolar mood disorder were participated. The patients were selected accidentally from Paknejad clinic in Tehran, and Baryab psychiatric center in Ardabil, in 2016-2017. They were diagnosed by psychiatrist and were under the treatment by sodium valproate. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviations) and inferential (ANCOVA covariance analysis) and analyzed using SPSS21 software. Meanwhile, for all hypotheses, a significant level of α = 0.05 was considered.

The findings showed that there was a significant difference in the use of sodium valproate between the two experimental and control groups regarding the use of anticonvulsant drugs. This drug has been shown to change the characteristics of the electroencephalograms in patients with epilepsy and bipolar disorder, and in each group, a significant reduction in the pattern The patient is EEG (the effect is 233.0). Also, sodium valproate reduced the level of depression in patients (P = 0.008 and F = 3.695).

The findings of this study indicate that anti-seizure effect of sodium valproate on reducing abnormal brain waves and decreasing the rate of depression in both epileptic and bipolar patients. Meanwhile, it became clear that bipolar patients have more electrophysiologic activity in the right hemisphere of their brain. These results support a kind of hypothesis of forgery.