Patient's question:
What are the causes or risk factors of epilepsy? How come children have epilepsy attacks for no reason?Doctor's answer:
Common causes of epilepsy include:1. Congenital malformations: such as chromosomal abnormalities, congenital hydrocephalus, microcephaly, corpus callosum agenesis, and cortical dysgenesis.
2. Prenatal and perinatal diseases: birth injuries are a common cause of symptomatic epilepsy in infancy.
3. Post-heatstroke sequelae: severe and prolonged high-temperature convulsions can lead to brain damage, including neuron loss and gliosis, primarily in the medial temporal lobe, especially the hippocampus.
4. Cranial brain injury: post-traumatic epilepsy is often accompanied by depressed fractures, dura mater tears, and local neurological signs, with long-term damage resulting in memory impairment.
5. Infections: seen in various bacterial meningitis, brain abscesses, granulomas, viral encephalitis, and parasitic diseases such as pork tapeworm, schistosomiasis, and toxoplasmosis.
6. Toxins: lead, mercury, carbon monoxide, ethanol, strychnine, and isoniazid poisoning, as well as systemic diseases like preeclampsia and uremia, can all trigger epilepsy.
7. Intracranial tumors
8. Cerebrovascular diseases: while epilepsy caused by vascular malformations or subarachnoid hemorrhage tends to occur at a younger age, post-stroke epilepsy is more common in middle-aged and elderly individuals, especially embolic stroke, thrombotic stroke, and multiple lacunar recurrences. Hypertensive encephalopathy is also often associated with epilepsy.
9. Nutritional and metabolic diseases: epilepsy frequently occurs in children with rickets. In adults, hypoglycemia caused by pancreatic cell tumors, diabetes, hyperthyroidism, hypoparathyroidism, and vitamin B6 deficiency can all lead to recurrence.