Increased body mass index (BMI) associated with late epilepsy onset in patients with temporal encephaloceles: a systematic review and analysis of individual patient data

This study investigates the association of Body Mass Index (BMI) and age of epilepsy onset, in patients with epilepsy associated with temporal encephaloceles (TEs). A comprehensive PubMed literature review was conducted using the keywords "temporal encephaloceles" and "epilepsy" for identifying articles for the analysis. Inclusion criteria encompassed all evidence levels reporting patients with TE-related epilepsy and documented BMI. Logistic regression analyses were performed to examine the effect of BMI on predicting epilepsy onset after the 25th year of age. Spearman's correlation assessed the relationship between BMI with epilepsy onset. Finally, the association between BMI and postsurgical outcomes, distinguishing between more favourable outcomes (Engel Class I and II) and less favourable outcomes (Engell Class III and IV) was explored. Of the initially identified 88 articles, nine were included in the analysis, involving 127 patients with TE-related epilepsy and reported BMI. The mean age of epilepsy onset was 24.9 years (SD = 14.8 years), with a mean BMI of 28.0 kg/m (SD = 7.4 kg/m ). A significant positive correlation was observed between BMI and age of epilepsy onset (rho = 0.448, p