Consanguinity in patients with mesial temporal lobe epilepsy due to hippocampal sclerosis in a Saudi population.

Objective: To investigate if there is an association between consanguinity and hippocampal sclerosis (HS) in the Saudi population.

Methods: A retrospective case-control study was conducted by assessing the prevalence of consanguinity in patients with pathologically proven HS, who underwent epilepsy surgery at King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, between January 2004 and December 2015. We reviewed the medical records to extract data, which included; age, gender, duration of epilepsy, history of febrile seizure, family history of epilepsy in a first or second-degree relative, and pathology reports.