Abstract

Despite recent research focus on the association between Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) infection and epilepsy there is no consensus about the findings. To obtain a more comprehensive estimate of the association we conducted a meta-analysis to determine the prevalence of H. pylori infection in epilepsy patients and healthy controls. PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, Google Scholar and CINAHL were searched to identify eligible studies. Four studies were selected for inclusion, involving 418 cases (232 patients with epilepsy and 186 controls). Overall, the prevalence of H. pylori infection in patients with epilepsy was higher than that in control groups. (46.98% vs. 26.34%, OR = 2.58, 95% CI: 1.15-5.82, P = 0.02). Subgroup analysis revealed that the levels of H. pylori infection in epilepsy patients was greater than that in control group by using ELISA (OR = 5.36, 95% CI: 2.62-10.95, P < 0.00001), but it was not statistically significant difference when using 13C urea breath test (OR = 1.36, 95% CI: 0.75-2.46, P = 0.32). Our analysis demonstrated that the association between H. pylori infection and epilepsy is a significant positive correlation. Whether H. pylori infection is a risk factor for epilepsy should thus be addressed in large-scale and prospective studies.

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