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Epidemiologic studies generally show an increase in the risk of epilepsy starting around 60–70 years of age, yet relatively little is known about the burden of epilepsy in the elderly or demographic factors associated with its occurrence. In this issue of Neurology®, Faught et al.1 provide a national estimate of the incidence and prevalence of epilepsy in Medicare recipients (>65 years). This study is timely, as the dearth of knowledge about epilepsy in the elderly becomes all the more pressing with the aging of the population. This issue was raised more than once at a recent meeting of an Institute of Medicine panel on the Public Health Dimensions of the Epilepsies (Los Angeles, CA, March 21, 2011) and at the Interagency Collaboration for Research on Epilepsy meeting held at NIH (June 27, 2011).
The authors found a prevalence among seniors of 10.8/1,000 and an estimated yearly incidence of new-onset epilepsy of 2.4/1,000. Men and women had highly similar prevalence and incidence figures. Relative to Caucasians, African Americans had almost twice the prevalence (10.2 vs 18.7/1,000) and incidence rates (2.3 vs 4.1/1,000). Asians (5.5 prevalence, 1.6 incidence) and Native Americans (7.7 prevalence, 1.1 incidence), by contrast, had much lower frequencies of epilepsy than Caucasians.
In the general …
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