Making learning about epilepsy cool
Neurophysiologists, as well as seeing you in clinic, maybe after your first seizure or to monitor progress on a particular medication, we see lots of patients on the wards including intensive care. As well as epilepsy, EEGs give us a lot of valuable information to diagnose and assist in the treatment of many conditions including managing brain injuries and coma.
As a Genome Scientist, I have spent my career working on the human genome. I am also the parent of two young children who, unfortunately, both suffered brain damage during birth and have severe cerebral palsy. My daughter also developed a rare and catastrophic form of epilepsy at 8 months, called West syndrome, or infantile spasms.
When scientists and clinicians write research papers, we have to do it in a very particular way, using technical words and following strict ways of working. However, this isn’t particularly helpful for most people with epilepsy who want to read about the research into their condition, but don’t necessarily know all of the technical terms!
It is estimated that 1 in around 200,000 people is born with a hypothalamic hamartoma (HH), an epileptogenic lesion attached to the hypothalamus. However, HH syndrome is so rare
I was 7 years old when I first had a seizure in school. My doctors told me that this didn’t always mean that a person had epilepsy, but, after having a cluster of 3 seizures just after lunch one day, I went on to have an EEG and MRI, the results of which led to my doctors diagnosing me with epilepsy. They diagnosed me with a rare form of Reflex epilepsy known as Eating Epilepsy.
First and foremost, I am mum to my 18-year-old twins, Will and Ella. Will has had seizures since day 4 of his life and it wasn’t until he was 14 that we found out that he had a rare genetic epilepsy called SCN2A2. I’m also Founder of SCN2A Australia3, Co-Founder of Genetic Epilepsy Team Australia (GETA)4, and on the Leadership Council for Global Genes5.
Sleep and epilepsy have a strong and bidirectional association. Sleep disturbances are commonly experienced by children with epilepsy and can be due to multiple factors. These include seizures, which can disrupt the continuity of sleep, and lead to daytime sleepiness
The first time my wife and I saw our son shaking we were in the kitchen. I’ll never forget it. As the shaking occurrences continued, we knew instinctively that they would not just blow over. The hollow gaze, the clinging in the air, the convulsions and especially the anxious, support-seeking look on his face. These continued for a while…
I am Javier Peña Ceballos and the epilepsy research nurse at King’s College Hospital. Two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of inviting Luke Stevens to take part in the REGAIN study. Luke had a diagnosis of Rolandic Epilepsy as a child and is now involved in promoting research into childhood epilepsy. Luke attended a research appointment at the National Institute for Health Research/Welcome Trust Clinical Research Facility at King’s College Hospital.
The vast majority of people with epilepsy are overwhelmingly treated with no knowledge of their genomic makeup. However, the future of medicine would seem to lie in the ability to more accurately target epilepsy treatment based upon knowledge of a person’s genome. This is commonly referred to as precision medicine, personalised medicine, or genomic medicine.