Children with allergic rhinitis and a risk of epilepsy

Purpose: Little is known about whether allergic disease is associated with a subsequent increased risk of childhood-onset epilepsy. We used a large, population-based cohort study to examine whether children with antecedent allergic rhinitis (AR) were associated with a subsequent increased risk of epilepsy. Methods: This retrospective population-based cohort study was conducted by using data from the 2000–2012 Taiwan's National Health Insurance Research Database. We enrolled 67,537 children aged 0–18 years diagnosed with AR and 67,537 age- and gender-matched children without the diagnosis of AR. The incidence rate (per 10,000 person-years) of epilepsy was calculated. We used Cox proportional hazards regression analysis to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) and 95 % confident interval (CI). Results: Of the 135,074 children included in the analyses, those with AR had a higher incidence rate of epilepsy (6.84 versus 3.95 per 10,000 person-years, p < 0.001) and an earlier age at diagnosis of epilepsy than those without AR [8.54 (4.90) versus 9.33 (5.40) years, p = 0.03)]. The Kaplan-Meier survival analysis demonstrated that the children with AR had a higher likelihood of developing epilepsy than those without AR (p < 0.001). After adjusting for confounding factors in multivariate model, children with AR had a 76 % increased risk of epilepsy (HR 1.76, 95 % CI 1.51–2.04) than those without AR. Boys had a 21 % increased risk of epilepsy (HR 1.21, 95 % CI 1.05–1.40) than girls. Conclusions: These results suggest that children with AR were associated with an increased subsequent risk of epilepsy.