Children with epilepsy have a moderately increased risk of dying early, but the cause of death is not usually related to seizures, investigators report. Rather, the increased risk appears to be more closely related to severe underlying conditions.

Dr. Anne T. Berg, at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, and her colleagues followed 613 children from the day they were diagnosed with epilepsy, between 1993 and 1997.

In 492 cases, a cause of epilepsy could not be identified, but in 121 children the condition was related to a neurological abnormality or to brain damage suffered in the womb, the team explains in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine.

During an average follow-up of almost 8 years, 13 of the study participants died. Only two deaths involved patients who were neurologically normal except for the epilepsy, the researchers report.

Specifically, ten deaths were linked to the underlying cause of the seizures, one was unrelated to the illness, and two were associated with seizures.

Berg’s group points out that the overall death rate in Connecticut, where the study was conducted, for individuals up to 25 years old, was 0.47 per 100 persons per decade. In their group with epilepsy, the rate was 0.52 among those with no known cause of epilepsy but 12.6 among the children with a recognized cause.

“Because most of the deaths were inevitable (associated with fatal neurodegenerative conditions) or associated with severe neurological dysfunction, prevention of mortality translates into prevention of the underlying causes and, to an extent, better control of seizures,” Berg and her team conclude.

SOURCE: Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, December 2004.