Childhood epilepsy and sleep.

Sleep and epilepsy are two well recognized conditions that interact with each other in a complex bi-directional way. Some types of epilepsies have increased activity during sleep disturbing it; while sleep deprivation aggravates epilepsy due to decreased seizure threshold. Epilepsy can deteriorate the sleep-related disorders and at the same time; the parasomnias can worsen the epilepsy. The secretion of sleep-related hormones can also be affected by the occurrence of seizures and supplementation of epileptic patients with some of these sleep-related hormones may have a beneficial role in controlling epilepsy.