Each year, about 150,000 children and adolescents in the United States will come to medical attention for evaluation of a newly occurring seizure disorder of some type. Between 2% and 4% of all children in Europe and the United States experience at least one convulsion associated with a febrile illness before the age of 5 years. The cumulative incidence of febrile convulsions among children ranges from about 1% in China to more than 8% in Japan and 14% in Guam. The peak incidence of a first febrile convulsion occurs in the second year of life. Between 0.5% and 1% of children and adolescents experience a seizure associated with other acute metabolic or neurologic insults; most of these occur in the neonatal period. The incidence of epilepsy (recurrent unprovoked seizures) in children and adolescents seems relatively consistent across all populations studied, ranging from 50 to 100/100,000. The highest incidence of epilepsy is in the first year of life. West syndrome accounts for about 2% of all childhood epilepsy. Lennox-Gastaut syndrome for 1-2%, childhood absence epilepsy (pyknolepsy) for 10-15%, juvenile myoclonic epilepsy for 5%, and idiopathic localization-related epilepsy for 10%. Between 0.5 and 1% of children experience a nonrecurrent, single, unprovoked convulsive episode. Following are the estimated numbers of children and adolescents with newly diagnosed convulsive disorders in the United States for the year 1990: febrile seizures, 100,000; neonatal seizures, 4,000; other provoked seizures, 6,000; single unprovoked seizures, 10,000; and epilepsy, 30,000.

Essential tremor (ET) is the most prevalent movement disorder. It is unknown to what extent ET clusters within families, and the role of genetic susceptibility in the etiology of ET has not been adequately investigated at the population level. The problem is largely methodological, with few well-designed studies. The Washington Heights-lnwood Genetic Study of ET, begun in 1995, is designed to investigate the genetics of ET using a methodology that has not been applied to ET research to date. Part of the design includes a new set of clinical and electrophysiological diagnostic criteria for ET; the present paper describes this novel study design.

Context Moderate alcohol consumption has been shown to be protective for coronary heart disease, but the relationship between moderate alcohol consumption and ischemic stroke is more controversial. Objective To determine the association between alcohol consumption and risk of ischemic stroke.

We reviewed 81 patients with dementia and autopsy findings of Alzheimer's disease (AD) to identify patients with seizures or myoclonus after onset of dementia. Eight (10%) had seizures, and eight others (10%) had myoclonus. The incidence of seizures was 10 times more than expected in a reference population. Seizures occurred in any stage of AD, but myoclonus was often a late manifestation. Both seizures and myoclonus, individually or together, are manifestations of AD and may be seen at any time in the course of the illness.