Full details @ Clinical features associated with epilepsy occurrence, resolution, and drug resistance in children with cerebral palsy: A population-based study (Feroze et al., 2023).
I investigated clinical and imaging risk factors for drug-resistant epilepsy on children with cerebral palsy. I applied hierarchical cluster analysis using R with Gower’s distance, which was weighted towards drug responsiveness of patients. The Ward agglomeration method with clusters was chosen using the dendrogram and the optimal distance between clusters. I used T-distributed stochastic neighbour embedding to visualise the cluster plots. I also generated a majority proportion-based heatmap to show the risk factors that were prevalent in each cluster.
Cluster 2 had the highest proportion of drug resistant children with CP (94%), followed by Cluster 3 (54%) and Cluster 1 (10%).
The clinical features observed in Cluster 2 were severe intellectual impairment, GMFCS level V, previous history of neonatal seizures, generalised seizures, and multifocal epileptiform activity at evolution. Children in Cluster 3 presented with spastic hemiplegia, focal motor or focal with impaired awareness seizures. Cluster 1 includes both generalised and focal seizures and perinatal insult and did not show any association with severity of CP and its impairment unlike Cluster 3.