Neurologists want the public to take Epilepsy more seriously

It was Easter 2003, and something was wrong with Kimberly Taube. She hadn’t contacted her sister, who had been cooking a family dinner and was waiting for Taube to check in. Multiple phone calls to her home bounced to voicemail. Concerned, her sister drove to Taube’s apartment and let herself in with her spare key. Kimberly was dead in her bed.Her death certificate said “cardiac dysrhythmia,” but her sister, Nikki Botwinik, thinks it was something else: epilepsy. Taube’s family believes that the 28-year-old, who had been diagnosed with epilepsy when she was 12, experienced sudden death in epilepsy, or SUDEP. An autopsy revealed that Taube hadn’t been taking her daily medication, which probably triggered a deadly seizure.

 

Americans who die from epilepsy do so either directly from seizures that cause the heart or lungs to stop or damage the brain, or indirectly through drownings and accidents caused by seizures. Studies have shown that epilepsy is often not listed as a cause of death on death certificates, and as a result it’s impossible for public health officials to quantify the problem and to offer guidance.In a recent editorial in Neurology, the journal of the American Academy of Neurology, a group of experts sounded the alarm on what they call a greatly underestimated problem. “Despite clear evidence of an important public health problem,” they write, “efforts to assess and prevent epilepsy-related deaths remain inadequate.”

Epilepsy is a neurological disorder characterized by recurrent seizures. It affects an estimated 2.2 million people in the United States, with about 150,000 new diagnoses each year. It can be inherited or caused by a traumatic brain injury, but its cause is unknown in 60 percent of cases. Epilepsy can be treated with anti-seizure medication, but there is no cure.Neurologist Orrin Devinsky, lead author of the opinion piece in Neurology, said that because there has been “no attempt to systematically classify, count and surveil” epilepsy deaths, it is hard to know what circumstances may make someone particularly vulnerable. As a result, many patients and doctors rely on anecdotal evidence or ideas that may not be accurate.

“It’s really very simple,” he says. He points to public health campaigns such as the one that cut the sudden infant death syndrome mortality rate from nearly three in 2,000 live births to one in 2,000 by telling parents to place their infants on their backs in their cribs. When states were mandated to track deaths by SIDS, he notes, public awareness — and research budgets — grew.But education may not be enough. For people with epilepsy, medication can be a costly, inconvenient burden with cognitive and other side effects that some people find difficult. In a 2007 study, 29 percent of patients reported that they were not adhering to their treatment regimen.