Causes of death among people with convulsive epilepsy in rural West China

Abstract

In rural West China, the risk of premature death is nearly 5 times higher in people with convulsive epilepsy than in the general Chinese population and especially high among young people. Accidental death, including drowning, and probable SUDEP are the leading putative causes of death in people with convulsive epilepsy in rural West China.

Premature mortality in a Georgian cohort of people with epilepsy

“…One striking finding was that in the 5-19 year age groups the mortality rate was up to twelve times higher than in the general population. This is in agreement with other studies (Ding et al, 2013;Mu et al, 2011).…”

“…We tried to account for this through sensitivity analysis. Taking this into account the SMR suggested a three-fold increased risk of premature mortality in people with epilepsy and this is similar to data from other countries (Mu et al, 2011). When we considered the worst case scenario, assuming all those lost to follow-up had died, the mortality rate was ten times as high as in general population.…”

“…Premature death among people with epilepsy is probably more common in resource poor-countries, where some data suggest mortality rates three to five times as high as in the general population (Mu et al, 2011;Ding et al, 2013). Among people who were located we found a significantly increased overall premature mortality compared with the general population in Georgia.…”

Epilepsy-related clinical characteristics and mortality

“…24 Of the cohorts, 22 were of population-based representativeness of PWE in the base population. 21,24,[26][27][28]30,32,33,[36][37][38][40][41][42][43][44][45][46]48,[51][52][53] Four cohorts of high representativeness used a single source for case identification with a concomitant risk of incomplete case ascertainment. 20,29,50,54 For example, 2 cohorts were based on nationwide Finnish drug reimbursement registries, which do not automatically identify permanently institutionalized PWE.…”

Plumbing and wiring: Atherosclerosis in epilepsy

“…After all, to take the general contracting metaphor, we would not expect the wiring in a house to have an impact on the plumbing. Yet epidemiologic studies over several decades, from multiple populations, using slightly varying endpoints, clearly demonstrate that patients with epilepsy have significantly elevated rates of vascular disease [4][5][6][7][8] . That such vascular disease affects the brain is shown specifically in the elevated rates of stroke seen in several of these studies 5,8,9 .…”