Epilepsy in African Americans

Section Overview

According to the US Census Bureau and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 637,000 African Americans have been told that they have epilepsy or a seizure disorder.

Over 20,000 African Americans are diagnosed with seizures each year.

Studies in 2005 and 2010 found that African Americans were 60% less likely to receive surgery for temporal lobe epilepsy compared to Caucasians.

Challenges Faced for African Americans with Epilepsy

African Americans are:

• More likely to be diagnosed with epilepsy in an Emergency Room
• More likely to develop epilepsy over a lifetime
• More likely to experience status epilepticus (a medical emergency in which a seizure continues for longer than 5 minutes or multiple seizures cluster together)
• At an increased risk for Sudden Unexplained Death in Epilepsy (SUDEP)
  • Every year, about 1 in 1,000 adults and 1 in 4,500 children with epilepsy die of SUDEP
  • According to a 2017 article by Greenlund, in 2014, SUDEP related deaths were more likely to occur in African Americans (1.42 deaths per 100,000) compared to Caucasians (0.86 deaths per 100.000)
• Less likely to experience seizure control or complete seizure control
• Less likely to be recruited into clinical trials for patients with epilepsy

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