A recent longitudinal study indicates that the incidence of new-onset epilepsy has remained stable in children and young adults but has increased in elderly individuals over the past 40 years. Rather than signalling a failure to prevent epilepsy, however, this phenomenon might be attributable to the comorbidities of epilepsy.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 print issues and online access
$209.00 per year
only $17.42 per issue
Rent or buy this article
Prices vary by article type
from$1.95
to$39.95
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
References
Trinka, E. & Brigo, F. Antiepileptogenesis in humans: disappointing clinical evidence and ways to move forward. Curr. Opin. Neurol. 27, 227–235 (2014).
Löscher, W., Klitgaard, H., Twyman, R. E. & Schmidt, D. New avenues for anti-epileptic drug discovery and development. Nat. Rev. Drug Discov. 12, 757–776 (2013).
Banerjee, P. N., Filippi, D. & Allen Hauser, W. The descriptive epidemiology of epilepsy — a review. Epilepsy Res. 85, 31–45 (2009).
Sillanpää, M., Lastunen, S., Helenius, H. & Schmidt, D. Regional differences and secular trends in the incidence of epilepsy in Finland: a nationwide 23-year registry study. Epilepsia 52, 1857–1867 (2011).
Christensen, J. et al. Incidence and prevalence of epilepsy in Denmark. Epilepsy Res. 76, 60–65 (2007).
Sillanpää, M., Gissler, M. & Schmidt, D. Efforts in epilepsy prevention in the last 40 years: lessons from a large nationwide study. JAMA Neurol. http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jamaneurol.2015.4515 (2016).
Whiteford, H. A., Ferrari, A. J., Degenhardt, L., Feigin, V. & Vos, T. The global burden of mental, neurological and substance use disorders: an analysis from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010. PLoS ONE 10, e0116820 (2015).
Hauser, W. A., Annegers, J. F. & Kurland, L. T. Incidence of epilepsy and unprovoked seizures in Rochester, Minnesota: 1935–1984. Epilepsia 34, 453–468 (1993).
Sander, J., Cockerell, O., Hart, Y. & Shorvon, S. Is the incidence of epilepsy falling in the UK? Lancet 342, 874 (1993).
Fisher, R. S. et al. ILAE official report: a practical clinical definition of epilepsy. Epilepsia 55, 475–482 (2014).
Acknowledgements
We thank Nathalie Jetté for lending us her expertise in the use of administrative databases for clinical research. J.W.S. is based at the UCL Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Comprehensive Biomedical Research Centre, which received a proportion of funding from the UK Department of Health's National Institute for Health Research Biomedical Research Centres funding scheme. J.W.S. receives research support from the Marvin Weil Epilepsy Research Fund, and his current position is endowed by the UK Epilepsy Society.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
J.W.S. has received research funding from Eisai, GSK and UCB, and personal fees from Eisai, UCB Lundbeck and Teva, outside the submitted work. M.R.K. has received grants and personal fees from UCB, outside the submitted work.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Sander, J., Keezer, M. Trends in new-onset epilepsy — the importance of comorbidities. Nat Rev Neurol 12, 254–256 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrneurol.2016.32
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrneurol.2016.32