Epilepsy is a neurological disorder caused by abnormal brain activity, which manifests as seizures.
“People with poorly controlled seizures have the greatest risk of SUDEP, and seizures during sleep may hold the higher risk,” said researcher from UVA’s Department of Neurology and the UVA Brain Institute Dr. Mark Quigg.
To prove this, Quigg and Dr. Andrew Schomer, also from UVA’s Department of Neurology and the UVA Brain Institute
monitored the brain and heart activity of 41 epilepsy patients while they were asleep. They noticed that patients in deeper sleep during a seizure saw lower heart rates.
"We have been trying to better understand the cardiac changes around the time of a seizure in patients with epilepsy. When we looked at the heart rates for patients with epilepsy admitted to the hospital, many of them develop tachycardia [a fast heart rate] following a seizure, but a subset of patients have a decreased heart rate. This decline was more pronounced when the patients were asleep,” explained Schomer.
While sleeping naturally causes heart rate to slow, the addition of a seizure, could have a dangerous affect.
There is still much research to be done, as the scientists still do not fully understand the causes of SUDEP, but this discovery could direct them on the right track to identify the root of the condition and preventing it from occurring.
"We know there is an increased risk during sleep and if seizures are poorly controlled. Hopefully with further study we can try to identify individuals who are at an increased risk and work to prevent this devastating outcome,” Schomer explained.
Quigg added that “our findings can direct further research to determine how the heart’s and lung’s control systems fail during sleep-related seizures in order to help prevent SUDEP.”