Marker
Findings/significance
Analysis
Prolactin
Elevated; does not differentiate between epilepsy and syncope
• Serum, 80% vs. 60% (Lusic et al., 1999)
• Serum, 80% (Tumani et al., 1999)
Lowered during treatment with anticonvulsants
Serum (Wong et al., 2002)
Creatine kinase
Postictal CK increase, maximum after about 40 h, slow normalization within about 4 days
• Serum (Chesson et al., 1983)
• Serum (Wyllie et al., 1985)
Telencephalin (ICAM-5)
Indicator of temporal lobe dysfunction
Serum (Rieckmann et al., 1998)
NSE (indicator of neuronal damage)
• Increased in CSF and/or serum:
– Status epilepticus
– Epileptic seizure
– Nonconvulsive status epilepticus
• Correlates with seizure duration and outcome
• Serum (Rabinowicz et al., 1995)
• CSF (Correale et al., 1998)
• Serum (Büttner et al., 1999)
• Serum (Tumani et al., 1999)
• Animal model, CSF (Hasegawa et al., 2002)
• Unchanged:
– Absence status, febrile seizure (focal > generalized), epileptic seizure
– Epilepsy in children (symptomatic > idiopathic)
• CSF, serum (Shirasaka, 2002)
• CSF, serum (Tanabe et al., 2001)
• CSF (Palmio et al., 2001)
• CSF (Wong et al., 2002)
Hormones (cortisol, ACTH, T3, T4, TSH, LH, FSH, GH)
Postictal increases persist for about 2 h
Motta et al., 2000
Disease | Typical findings in CSF and/or serum |
Meningoencephalitis | Acute inflammatory changes (pleocytosis, barrier dysfunction, synthesis of pathogen-specific antibodies) |
Autoimmune encephalitis | Changes suggestive of chronic inflammation (possibly mild pleocytosis, oligoclonal IgG bands) |
