Epilepsy: A (wo)manly ailment?

[AndrewIrish]

Anyone got stats on the male/female ration on whom epilepsy effects? Just curious...

 

[Screamy]

I was looking in to that a while back, all I have found is anyone can have it. It would be interesting though to know, if they cannot tell us whom epilepsy affects, lets have some kind of survey with epileptic patients and simply state if they are male or female.

 

[Silat]

As I understand it, both genders can have it, but between 60% and 70% of patients with E are female in America.
According to the poll on the genders of people on CWE, that seems to hold true.
However I don't have any official statistics at the moment... I'll try and find some here in a little while, if nobody else has posted any...

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EDIT:
Looks like I may have mis-spoken...

There is broad agreement between studies that females have a marginally lower incidence of epilepsy and unprovoked seizures than males. This difference is usually attributed to male's greater exposure to risk factors for lesional epilepsy and acute symptomatic seizures. On the other hand, idiopathic generalized epilepsies (IGEs), which may represent some 15-20% of all epilepsies, are more common among females. Also, the behavior of some common epilepsy syndromes such as mesial temporal sclerosis may differ between genders with isolated auras more common among females and secondary seizure spread more likely in males. Trends toward gender differences are also seen in other important aspects of epilepsy. These include the incidence of status epilepticus (more common in men), incidence of sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP), prognosis, and mortality.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18929074
Different types of E are more common in men, and different kinds are more common in women.
Overall, I guess it's pretty much even. Men slightly more than women overall.... Men are more prone to SUDEP though. :?

Here is the poll I was referring to: http://www.coping-with-epilepsy.com/forums/f27/male-female-11492/
33.64% male. 66.36% female. Currently, anyway.

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2nd edit:

This is just interesting...
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2009/08/28-01.html
Gender dysphoria induced by a seizure that affected the amygdala... huh...

 

[Screamy]

Excellent Work Silat!

 

[Nakamova]

As I understand it, both genders can have it, but between 60% and 70% of patients with E are female in America. According to the poll on the genders of people on CWE, that seems to hold true.

I think the "male or female?" poll on CWE may be more revealing of who is more likely to join an online forum looking for help...

 

[no.guru]

Online polls in general suffer from self-selection problems, where members of different groups are more or less likely to respond. They're fine, but only tell the percentages that responded to that particular poll.

Edit: I haven't found any specific stats, but this epilepsy.com page (Who Gets Epilepsy) says it's more prevalent in men. A list of risk factors from the Mayo Clinic says men are slightly more at risk of developing it than women.

 

[Silat]

onder:

I never said the survey was an accurate scientific stat... I posted it in reference to what I was originally talking about, in case people were curious but didn't want to look it up.

I think we can all agree an online poll of any sort is not an accurate scientific tool.

The important part of my post was supposed to be the link describing the gender differences and prevalences of epilepsy, along with the quote from that link I directly posted, that I added 22 minutes after my original post once I had time to look into it further...

:dontknow:

 

[no.guru]

Just a general response to the thread. I thought I remembered hearing men were more likely to have E, but it's been long ago so I was going to check anyway. No offense intended.