An epileptic seizure is considered as a transient episode of signs or symptoms, including transitory confusion, staring speech, irrepressible jerking movements, loss of consciousness, psychic symptoms such as fear and anxiety, due to the abnormal synchronous neuronal activity of the brain. In the present review, we aim to discuss the predominance of sleep-related epilepsy during NREM, established familial links to the pathogenesis of SHE, BECTS and PS, and highlight the present available pharmacotherapy options.Įpilepsy is characterized by frequent and unpredictable disruptions of brain functions resulting in “epileptic seizures.” Epilepsy has a great impact on the quality of life through increased incidence of injury and death, unemployment rates, lower monthly incomes, higher household costs and high absenteeism at work and schools ( Jennum et al., 2017 Trinka et al., 2018 Wibecan et al., 2018). Although some familial types are described, others are seemingly sporadic occurrences. Sleep related hypermotor epilepsy (SHE), benign partial epilepsy with centrotemporal spikes or benign rolandic epilepsy (BECTS), and Panayiotopoulos Syndrome (PS) are three of the most frequently implicated epilepsies occurring during the sleep state. Current findings indicate that the sleep-related epilepsy manifests predominantly during the synchronized stages of sleep NREM over REM stage. Sleep comprises two distinct stages i.e., non-rapid eye movement (NREM) and rapid eye movement (REM) that alternate every 90 min with NREM preceding REM. Sleep-related epilepsy is nocturnal seizures that manifest solely during the sleep state. In the last several decades, sleep-related epilepsy has drawn considerable attention among epileptologists and neuroscientists in the interest of new paradigms of the disease etiology, pathogenesis and management. 5Department of Familty Medicine, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Medical Centre, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.4Excellence Centre in Forensic Osteology Research Center, Faculty of Medicine, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, Thailand.3Department of Anatomy, Faculty of Medicine, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, Thailand.2Department of Anatomy, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Medical Centre, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.1Department of Physiology, Faculty of Medicine, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Medical Centre, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Jaya Kumar 1, Amro Solaiman 2, Pasuk Mahakkanukrauh 3,4, Rashidi Mohamed 5 and Srijit Das 2 *