Publication type
Journal Article
Author
Publication date
June 12, 2023
Summary:
Objective: Recently, there is growing interest in investigating how personality traits could predict a subsequent diagnosis of various diseases. Regarding epilepsy, there is only preliminary evidence based on cross-sectional studies linking personality traits to epilepsy, hence, emphasizing the need for longitudinal studies. The aim of the current study is to assess if the Big Five personality traits can predict the risk of an epilepsy diagnosis.
Methods: The current study analyzed data from 17,789 participants who participated in Understanding Society: the UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS) at Wave 3 (collected between 2011 and 2012) and Wave 10 (collected between 2018 and 2019). The mean age was 47.01 (SD = 16.31) years and were 42.62% male. Two binary logistic regressions were used by including age, monthly income, highest educational qualification, legal marital status, residence, and standardized personality traits scores at Wave 3 as predictors for a clinical diagnosis of epilepsy at Wave 10 for males and females, respectively.
Results: There were 175 participants (0.98%) with epilepsy and 17,614 participants (99.02%) without epilepsy at Wave 10. Results of the binary regression analyses revealed that Neuroticism is positively related to the risk of an epilepsy diagnosis in males (OR = 1.32, p = 0.04, 95% CI [1.01, 1.71]) but not in females 7 years after Wave 3 at Wave 10. However, other personality traits including Agreeableness, Openness, Conscientiousness, and Extraversion were not significant predictors of epilepsy diagnosis.
Conclusion: These findings suggested that personality traits might enhance our understanding of psychophysiological associations in epilepsy. Neuroticism might be a relevant factor that should be taken into account in epilepsy education and treatment. Moreover, sex differences must be taken into account.
Published in
Frontiers in Neurology
Volume
Volume: 14:1083792
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fneur.2023.1083792
ISSN
16642295
Subjects
Notes
© 2023 Kang.
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