ReviewFrontiers in neurology2018
Dead in the Night: Sleep-Wake and Time-Of-Day Influences on Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy.
Review in Frontiers in neurology, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 39 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
39 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 65 citations in OpenAlex.
- Treatments for the prevention of Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy (SUDEP).The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2020Pooled it
- Sleep, Neural Circulatory Control, and Cardiovascular Disease: A Mechanistic Review.Arteriosclerosis, thrombosis, and vascular biology · 2026Review
- Effect of epileptogenesis on hypercapnic cardioventilatory response in kainic acid rats.Epilepsia · 2026Article
- Translational Research Symposium: Current State of SUDEP Research.Epilepsy currents · 2026Article
- Before diagnosing SUDEP in neurocysticercosis and nodding syndrome, alternative causes for sudden death must be thoroughly ruled out.Forensic science, medicine, and pathology · 2026Article
- The bed nucleus of the stria terminalis as a neuromodulatory target for refractory epilepsy.Frontiers in network physiology · 2026Review
- Plasticity induced loss of apnea alarm through repeated apneas: A proposed mechanism for respiratory sudden death.Epilepsy & behavior : E&B · 2025Review
- Article
- Seizure-related death exhibits a circadian rhythm independent of seizure timing or sleep in a mouse model of Dravet syndrome.The Journal of physiology · 2025Article
- MK-212 precipitates seizure-induced death in amygdala-kindled mice via a non-5-HTEpilepsy & behavior : E&B · 2025Article
- The hidden rhythms of epilepsy: exploring biological clocks and epileptic seizure dynamics.Acta epileptologica · 2025Review
- Sleep links hippocampal propensity for epileptiform activity to its viscerosensory inputs.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2025Article
- Brain connectivity correlates of breathing and cardiac patterns in epilepsy: A study including SUDEP cases.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
- Article
- Cyclical underreporting of seizures in patient-based seizure documentation.Annals of clinical and translational neurology · 2023Article
- Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors and 5-HTNeuroscience · 2023Article
- Microstructural evaluation of the brain with advanced magnetic resonance imaging techniques in cases of electrical status epilepticus during sleep (ESES).Turkish journal of medical sciences · 2023Article
- Epilepsy, gut microbiota, and circadian rhythm.Frontiers in neurology · 2023Review
- Data quality evaluation in wearable monitoring.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Sudden unexpected death in epilepsy.Current opinion in neurology · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP) is the leading cause of epilepsy-related death in patients with refractory epilepsy. Convergent lines of evidence suggest that SUDEP occurs due to seizure induced perturbation of respiratory, cardiac, and electrocerebral function as well as potential predisposing factors. It is consistently observed that SUDEP happens more during the night and the early hours of the morning. The aim of this review is to discuss evidence from patient cases, clinical studies, and animal research which is pertinent to the nocturnality of SUDEP. There are a number of factors which might contribute to the nighttime predilection of SUDEP. These factors fall into four categories: influences of (1) being unwitnessed, (2) lying prone in bed, (3) sleep-wake state, and (4) circadian rhythms. During the night, seizures are more likely to be unwitnessed; therefore, it is less likely that another person would be able to administer a lifesaving intervention. Patients are more likely to be prone on a bed following a nocturnal seizure. Being prone in the accouterments of a bed during the postictal period might impair breathing and increase SUDEP risk. Sleep typically happens at night and seizures which emerge from sleep might be more dangerous. Lastly, there are circadian changes to physiology during the night which might facilitate SUDEP. These possible explanations for the nocturnality of SUDEP are not mutually exclusive. The increased rate of SUDEP during the night is likely multifactorial involving both situational factors, such as being without a witness and prone, and physiological changes due to the influence of sleep and circadian rhythms. Understanding the causal elements in the nocturnality of SUDEP may be critical to the development of effective preventive countermeasures.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.