Depression is the most frequent psychiatric comorbidity seen in mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE) patients with hippocampal sclerosis (HS). Moreover, the HS is the most frequent pathological hallmark in MTLE-HS. Although there is a well-documented hippocampal volumetric reduction in imaging studies of patients with major depressive disorder, in epilepsy with comorbid depression, the true role of the hippocampus is not entirely understood. This study aimed to verify if patients with unilateral MTLE-HS and the co-occurrence of depression have differences in neuronal density of the hippocampal sectors CA1–CA4. For this purpose, we used a histopathological approach. This was a pioneering study with patients having both clinical disorders. However, we found no difference in hippocampal neuronal density when depression co-occurs in patients with epilepsy. In this series, CA1 had the lowest counting in both groups, and HS ILAE Type 1 was the most prevalent. More studies using histological assessments are needed to clarify the physiopathology of depression in MTLE-HS.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.