Abstract: Objective To study sleep characteristics in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) through polysomnography (PSG). Methods Twenty-five TLE patients (TLE group) and eighteen healthy volunteer subjects (control group) were recruited to our study. Patients of two groups were evaluated by whole-night PSG, including total time in bed (TIB), total sleep time (TST), sleep efficiency (SE), sleep latency (SL), rapid eye movement latency (REML), wake after sleep onset (WASO), the percentages of non-REM (NREM) 1, 2 and 3 stages and the percentages of rapid eye movement (REM) occupied TST (N1%, N2%, N3% and REM%), the apnea- hypopnea index (AHI), hypopnea index, mean oxygen saturation (SpO2) and nadir SpO2, periodic leg movements (PLMs) index and PLMs index of REM sleep, sleep stage shifts (SSS) and sleep stage shifts per hour (SSS/h), NREM1, NREM2, NREM3 and REM sleep stage and wake shifts (abbreviated as N1, N2, N3, REM and W) and their proportions of SSS (abbreviated as N1/SSS, N2/SSS, N3/SSS, REM/SSS and W/SSS). Results Compared with control group, WASO, PLMs, PLMs index of REM sleep, SSS, SSS/H and N2 were significantly increased in TLE group. Moreover, compared with control group, SpO2 was decreased in TLE group (P＜0.05). Conclusion Our results suggest that TLE patients have sleep disorder manifested as disorder of sleep structure, increased incidents of respiratory and motion events.

Key words: epilepsy, temporal lobe, sleep disorder, polysomnography, sleep structure, respiratory events