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© Toru Hanai / Reuters / REUTERS
Devastation in Miyagi prefecture following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that killed thousands.
The study, published in the journal Epilepsia, looked at 440 patient records from Kesennuma City Hospital, in a city that was devastated by the massive tsunami touched off by the 9.0 magnitude earthquake.
Thirteen patients were admitted with seizures in the eight weeks after the disaster, but only one had been admitted in the two months before March 11.
Previous research has linked stressful life-threatening disasters with an increased risk of seizures, but most case reports lacked clinical data with multiple patients.
"We suggest that stress associated with life-threatening situations may enhance seizure generation," wrote lead author Ichiyo Shibahara, a staff neurosurgeon at Sendai Medical Center in northern Japan.
But he added that stress itself is not a universal risk factor for seizures.
"Most of the seizure patients had some sort of neurological disease before the earthquake," he said.
His team examined medical records from patients admitted to the neurosurgery ward in the eight weeks before and after the March 11 disaster and compared them to the same time period each year between 2008 and 2010.
In 2008, there were 11 seizure patients admitted between January 14 and May 15. In 2009, there were seven and in 2010, just four.
Of the 13 admitted after the disaster, 11 had preexisting brain disorders that included epilepsy, head injuries or stroke. All the patients lived independently, and eight took anti-convulsive medication.
Shibahara noted that of the five patients admitted just days after the tsunami, it was "not because of a lack of anticonvulsants, but because of the stress."
One later patient, though, was unable to refill his medication weeks after the devastation.
"This is interesting, but I'm not 100 percent convinced," said William Theodore, senior investigator of the clinical epilepsy section at the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, Maryland.
Theodore, who was not involved in the study, told Reuters health that because the number of patients was so small, random variation could explain the surge in seizures. Upset patients may also have forgotten to take, or weren't able to find, anticonvulsant drugs.
There are also various ways that natural disasters might cause seizures, including head trauma, infections from polluted water or a lack of sleep, he added.
But the study did have a practical take home message, he said: "If you already have seizures and you're taking medication, always make sure you have a decent supply just in case some natural disaster occurs."
(Reporting from New York by Trevor Stokes at Reuters Health; editing by Elaine Lies)
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"If you already have seizures and you're taking medication, always make sure you have a decent supply just in case some natural disaster occurs."
Just read that line, rest of the article is worthless. BTW, for persons known to have seizures and are taking anti-seizure meds, and they have a seizure anyway, hospitalization is not usually necessary unless there are other factors involved. Most persons recover from seizures without medical intervention. Seizures are a spectrum disorder, too--there are many different types. I assume this article was referring to the dramatic tonic-clonic seizures that some still know as "grand mal"--but they should have clarified that somewhere in the article.
Another incomplete, poorly written, poorly researched article, saying nothing.
How much money was spent on this steaming pile of crap?
You can't always have a "decent supply" of medication when insurance companies will only let you get 30 days at a time, then wait 3 weeks before you can get a refill.
As the mother of a child with seizures, you can bet living in a shelter would garner you a stay in a hospital. Most of the time we deal with my daughters seizures at home but if we were living in a shelter and she did happen to have a seizure you can bet a lot of the other inmates would get involved and send us off to the hospital. Seizures are upsetting to all the non seizure folks out there, and those who have never seen one pretty much freak out at the mere mention of a seizure. That and losing meds, not being able to get refills, inablity to get keto meals, losing a VNS magnet,.... sure thing she would end up in the hospital. Heck I would be willing to bet money on a rise in seizure activity for folks during holidays too. Anything that upsets the status quo would do it.