What do Theodore Roosevelt, Napoleon Bonaparte, Neil Young and Prince have in common? They all had epilepsy.
“Epilepsy looks different from person to person,” says Beth Dean, CEO of CURE Epilepsy, a non profit working to fund grants and raise awareness of epilepsy. “There are over 40 medications for treatment, various devices to help control seizures, as well as surgery, and still, a third of the patients, or 1.2 million people in the nation, aren’t able to control their epilepsy.”
Epilepsy is the fourth most common neurological condition and currently affects almost 65 million people worldwide, with nearly 80 percent of cases occurring in low- and middle-income countries. Here’s what you should know about epilepsy during its awareness month.
A 4000-year-old Akkadian tablet in Mesopotamia details the earliest account of epilepsy. Nearly a millennium later, the Late Babylonians composed a diagnostic manual titled Sakikku, which included epilepsy-related texts.
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