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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrneurol.2016.32
