Henriette Kirstine Christensen
In Africa, where parasitological infections are common, epilepsy is prevalent. A door-to-door study in 2016 found an epilepsy prevalence of 4.6 percent in an Onchocerciasis endemic area in the Logo health zone, Ituri province, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and 50.6 percent of epileptics were infected with Onchocerca volvulus. In the current study, the serum of 195 people infected with O. volvulus and suffering from epilepsy was tested to determine the proportion of co-infections with Taenia solium, Toxocara Canis and Strongyloides. Neuro-inflammation may be linked to Onchocerciasis- Associated Epilepsy (OAE), although little immunological research in children with this type of epilepsy has been conducted to date. In a preliminary investigation, we examined cytokine levels in the Cerebrospinal Fluid (CSF) of people with OAE from Maridi, South Sudan, and Mosango, DRC, and compared them to cytokine levels in the CSF of Africans with non-OAE neurological illnesses and Europeans with epilepsy or other neurological conditions. In an ideal scenario, cytokine levels in serum and CSF have taken at the time of the first seizure should be measured in prospective research.