Peer-reviewed veterinary case report
Exercise effects on sleep and seizures in epileptic dogs
By Grady, K et al.·Published in The Journal of small animal practice·2023·Department of Medical Sciences, United States·View original on PubMed →
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Original publication title: Effect of an intervention of exercise on sleep and seizure frequency in idiopathic epileptic dogs.
- Species:
- dog
Plain-English summary
A group of dogs with idiopathic epilepsy (a type of seizure disorder with no known cause) was monitored to see how increasing their exercise affected their sleep and seizure frequency. Over six months, dogs that increased their activity by 20% had slightly more seizures each month compared to those that did not increase their activity. However, these dogs also experienced a small improvement in their sleep quality. While the increase in seizures was noted, the overall impact of exercise on seizure control was not significant enough to recommend against activity.
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Abstract
OBJECTIVE: The goal of this study was to compare sleep and seizure frequency between epileptic dogs prescribed a 20% activity increase and epileptic dogs not prescribed an activity increase. METHODS: Sixty-nine dogs receiving anti-epileptic drug therapy were enrolled in a 6-month prospective, randomised, placebo-controlled clinical trial with an intention-to-treat analysis. A canine activity monitoring device was used to measure activity levels and sleep scores. RESULTS: Using an intention-to-treat analysis, the treatment group had an average of 0.381 more seizures per month (95% CI: 0.09 to 0.68) compared with the control group, although the difference in seizure days per month was not statistically significant. In a subgroup analysis of dogs whose activity increased by at least 10%, partial compliers had 0.719 more seizures per month (95% CI: 0.22 to 1.22) and 0.581 seizure days per month (95% CI: 0.001 to 1.16) compared with the control group. Sleep scores increased by 1.2% in the treatment compared with the control group (95% CI: 0.2 to 2.3%). CONCLUSIONS: Seizure frequency and sleep score increased slightly, but significantly, in dogs with idiopathic epilepsy prescribed an increase in activity, compared with a control group.
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Search related cases →Original publication on PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36368312/