Blood and Spinal Fluid Magnesium and Calcium Levels in Epilepsy and Convulsive States. ∗

Abstract

Certain of the constituents of blood and spinal fluid in cases of epilepsy have been subjected to analysis by a number of investigators in order to test the hypothesis that the incidence of convulsions in this condition is associated with a disturbance of the ion balance of the body. No significant variation from normal has been found in the calcium content of the blood and spinal fluid in epileptics. 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

Some time ago Hirschfelder and Haury 5 reported that they observed low magnesium and high potassium levels in the blood plasma in a high percentage of epileptic subjects during convulsive attacks.

To our knowledge virtually no information is available on the magnesium content of the spinal fluid and red blood corpuscles in epilepsy.

Since the blood and spinal fluid of epileptic subjects were available to the authors, a series of analyses was undertaken on the composition of the blood and spinal fluid of subjects afflicted with epilepsy and convulsive conditions. The cerebrospinal fluid was collected in the course of encephalography.

Determinations were made of the levels of plasma, red corpuscle and spinal fluid magnesium, serum and spinal fluid calcium, and spinal fluid inorganic phosphorus. Magnesium was determined by the method of Green-berg and Mackey, 6 calcium by a modification of Kirk and Schmidt's procedure, 7 and inorganic phosphorus according to Fiske and Subbarow's method. 8

A statistical evaluation of the results is given in Table I. The convulsive states of the 28 subjects investigated may be classified on an etiological basis as follows:

A comparison of the values of the arithmetical means with those for normal subjects taken from the compilation of Schmidt and Greenber is given in Table 11. The data show that the levels of the components analyzed are essentially normal with a tendency toward a greater degree of variation than is normally found in red corpuscle magnesium, serum calcium, and spinal fluid magnesium. Such variations from the normal arithmetical means as were found do not appear to be significant. The few instances of abnormally low or abnormally high analytical values that were observed did not fall into any special category of the cases.