Parent-Reported Sleep Disturbance Profiles in Children with Epilepsy: A Cross-Sectional Study Using the Sleep Disturbance Scale for Children (SDSC)

Background/Objectives: It is unclear whether sleep disturbances differ between epilepsy phenotypes defined by current International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE) criteria. We explored parent-reported sleep disturbances in children with idiopathic generalized epilepsy (IGE) and other epilepsies. Methods: Parents of 127 children with epilepsy completed the Polish Sleep Disturbance Scale for Children (SDSC). We compared IGE (n = 31) with other epilepsies by epilepsy type, etiology, and category, using non-parametric tests with false discovery rate (FDR) correction and linear regression adjusted for age and sex. Results: Children with IGE had lower total SDSC scores than children with other epilepsies (median 39 vs. 44), but this difference was small and not robust in sensitivity analyses. Compared with IGE, structural epilepsy (n = 18) was associated with higher scores for difficulties initiating and maintaining sleep (DIMS; β = 4.3, 95% CI 1.5 to 7.0) and epileptic encephalopathies (n = 15) with higher sleep hyperhidrosis (SHY) scores (β = 1.5, 95% CI 0.33 to 2.7); after FDR correction, both were at or near the threshold of significance (q = 0.053 and q = 0.047). Lower sleep–wake transition scores in IGE were explained by older age. Conclusions: Children with IGE may have milder parent-reported sleep disturbances. The DIMS and SHY findings are exploratory, and age should be considered when interpreting SDSC subscales.