[Research] Who pays for epilepsy research? And why?

[KarenB]

I did find this from the UK, where Epilepsy kills about 1000 a year, more than SIDS and AIDS combined in that country.
http://www.sudep.org/report-a-death/death-from-epilepsy/

But not more than breast cancer, which kills more than 11,000 a year in the UK
http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/cancer-info/cancerstats/types/liver/

 

[Dignan]

On the first link I provided, scroll to the bottom of the page and find more links on this subject. Not meaning to turn this into a competition between breast cancer and epilepsy, but in the US, reported seizure and seizure related deaths: 50,000. Breast Cancer: 40,000. My point was simply how underfunded and how little awareness for epilepsy is given comparitively.

http://www.epilepsy.com/node/986825

http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/breast/statistics/

 

[KarenB]

Wow -- at first I questioned that 50,000 deaths a year statistic, but the Epilepsy Therapy Project is a very reliable source.

As I mentioned, there's probably a lot of epilepsy related deaths that go reported as something else -- for instance, Valproic Acid (Depakote) -- was damaging our son's liver and bone marrow, so, potentially, someone could be seizure free, but die from a side effect of an AED, but it probably would not be reported as death from epilepsy.

But there's no doubt that epilepsy is a killer, and that research is seriously underfunded.

Intractible epilepsy is especially deadly for children. The chances of a child with intractible epilepsy living into their adult years is small, and the chances of a child with intractible epilepsy living into adult years without devastating disabilities is almost none.

 

[KarenB]

Intractable epilepsy in childhood, regardless of the cause, age, history of febrile seizure or family history of epilepsy, is marked by ongoing active cell injury (brain damage)

http://www.jneuroinflammation.com/content/6/1/38