After brain injury, there is an elevated risk of epilepsy for more than ten years after the physical damage occurred. Therefore, there could be an opportunity to protect these patients from epilepsy, concludes Dr Jakob Christensen, Department of Neurology, Aarhus University Hospital, Denmark, and team in an article published Online First (The Lancet) and in an upcoming edition of The Lancet.
Approximately 1.6 million young adults born in Denmark between 1977and 2002 were identified by the researchers from the Civil Registration system. Then data from the National Hospital Register were gathered on traumatic brain injury and epilepsy.
According to findings, the risk of epilepsy for mild brain injury or skull fracture doubled, and was multiplied by seven for patients with serious brain injury. Still a decade after the physical damage occurred, the risk of epilepsy was one-and-a-half times higher for mild brain injury, twice higher for skull fractures and four-and-a-half times higher for severe brain injury. For people over 15 years of age, the risk was all the more striking and increased three-and-a-half times for mild injury, and more than twelve times for severe injury. Women were at greater risk than men, and even more patients with a family history, showing a risk six times higher for mild injury and ten times higher for severe injury.
In conclusion, the authors write: “Traumatic brain injury is a significant risk indicator for epilepsy many years after the injury. Drug treatment after brain injury with the aim of preventing post-traumatic epilepsy has been discouraging, but our data suggest a long time interval for potential, preventive treatment of high risk patients.”
Professor Simon Shorvon and Dr Aidan Neligan, University College London Institute of Neurology, National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, London, UK, in a supplementary note, consider the finding that for at least a decade after a head injury the risk of epilepsy rises. They also discuss the possibility of avoiding epilepsy progression through treatment interventions.
Written by Stephanie Brunner (B.A)