Alcohol Abuse and Seizures: an Overview of Clinical Notions and Pathogenetic Theories

Alcohol abuse is a major causative factor of different neurological disorders, among which seizures and epilepsy have an important burden of disease. Through discussing different pathogenetic mechanisms, scholars have tried to define and describe the diversity of clinical pictures and occurrences that might elicit a convulsive disorder in the alcoholics. An overview of the history of the diagnostic and classificatory attempts is made in the present paper, and distinctions between acute intoxication and withdrawal syndromes are summarized. The influences of ethanol on the cellular level and on the synaptic processes are succinctly mentioned. The authors are focused predominantly in three particularities of the alcohol-related seizures, namely the so-called alcoholic epilepsy, withdrawal seizures, and subacute encephalopathy with seizures in chronic alcoholism (SESA syndrome). Several sources are quoted, and the paper contains a brief overview on the efficacy of benzodiazepines and other antiepileptic drugs in the treatment of this variety of clinical events.