Psychological Disturbances and Folic Acid in Chronic Epileptic Outpatients

The relationship between serum folate level and psychological disturbances was studied in a series of 95 chronic epileptic outpatients. All were nondrinkers. Serum folic acid in all cases and vitamin B12 in 83 cases were determined by radioimmunoassay. Only three factors were significantly related with psychological disturbances: serum levels of folic acid were significantly lower and the mean corpuscular volume of the erythrocytes was significantly higher in disturbed patients, particularly in those with the most severe psychiatric syndromes, and the incidence of disturbances was significantly higher in patients treated with three or more drugs. Conversely, variables such as number or type of seizures, duration of epilepsy, duration of treatment, presence of structural neurological lesions, previous mental retardation, or focal temporal lobe disturbances in the EEG did not show any statistical relationship to the presence of psychological disturbances. No relevant relationship was found between serum vitamin B12 and psychological disturbances.