Epilepsy: how can you determine if it will be inherited?

LegacyUser

As mentioned in the other thread, I have just watched the RTÉ documentary Life with Epilepsy. In it, the 17-year-old's father talked about how he also had epilepsy which he said he got from being involved in a fight. It has got me worried now as I though inherited epilepsy would be genetic. Could an accident result in epilepsy being inherited by your children?

My problem is that while no family member before me that we know of had epilepsy, and my first seizure started at the age of seven, we don't actually know where it came from although my mother says I was a bit slow in crying when I was born. The cause of my epilepsy is unknown. As stated earlier, I had surgery for epilepsy 15 years ago and haven't had an attack since.

Anyway, after watching that documentary I'm worried about the epilepsy ghost from my past as I'm hoping to have kids in the next few years. I would hate to have them go through what I went through. Are there any checks I can do to ensure a child will not have to endure that life?

Thank you.

MyKeyG

Soirbhíoch wrote: »

As mentioned in the other thread, I have just watched the RTÉ documentary Life with Epilepsy. In it, the 17-year-old's father talked about how he also had epilepsy which he said he got from being involved in a fight. It has got me worried now as I though inherited epilepsy would be genetic. Could an accident result in epilepsy being inherited by your children?

My problem is that while no family member before me that we know of had epilepsy, and my first seizure started at the age of seven, we don't actually know where it came from although my mother says I was a bit slow in crying when I was born. The cause of my epilepsy is unknown. As stated earlier, I had surgery for epilepsy 15 years ago and haven't had an attack since.

Anyway, after watching that documentary I'm worried about the epilepsy ghost from my past as I'm hoping to have kids in the next few years. I would hate to have them go through what I went through. Are there any checks I can do to ensure a child will not have to endure that life?

Thank you.

I can only give you personal opinion based on experience, Boards isn't the best place to look for hard facts. One thing about Epilepsy that you may know is that ANY person's brain has the capacity to produce a seizure, if the circumstances are appropriate. We're ALL susceptible. While the cause is often attributed to an accident, serious illness etc. by logical deduction, it's never fully known for sure why any given event/condition triggers seizures in one person but not in another. This is what's called a persons natural 'seizure threshold'.

I suffered a grand mal seizure five weeks ago due to binge drinking and my psychologist told me that while there are alcoholics who spend years drinking like fish they will never suffer fit's because every person has a different 'seizure threshold', some are just more susceptible to seizures than others.

Now your question is if this limited threshold can be passed on genetically. Nobody that I know on either side of my family has ever had a seizure despite many of them suffering from alcohol abuse, yet my threshold appears to be lower than them. In any case I've read documentation that states it's less than a 4% chance that epilepsy is genetic which could be thought negligible when you consider we're all susceptible to seizures whether we've had an accident, a blow to the head, a viral infection, tumour and so on.

You may not know exactly what condition triggers your seizures but the chance that this illusive condition will pass on to your children is from my reading very unlikely even if they do have a low seizure threshold.