ISC 2026 | Late-onset epilepsy after stroke: a growing public health concern
Alain Zingraff Lekoubou Looti, MD, MS, Penn State College of Medicine, Hershey, PA, highlights late-onset epilepsy as an emerging public health concern. He discusses the strong link between cerebrovascular disease and epilepsy, noting that stroke accounts for up to half of cases, underscoring the growing burden of seizures in stroke survivors. This interview took place at the 2026 International Stroke Congress (ISC), held in New Orleans, LA.
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Transcript
First of all, I would like to say that late-onset epilepsy is becoming a, I would say, public health emergency. As a matter of fact, one in three newly diagnosed cases of epilepsy in adults happens in elderly individuals. That is, those are individuals aged 60 years and above. And this is due to a rapid demographic transition where you see more and more elderly people. And sometimes you see an increasing number of children in some countries...
First of all, I would like to say that late-onset epilepsy is becoming a, I would say, public health emergency. As a matter of fact, one in three newly diagnosed cases of epilepsy in adults happens in elderly individuals. That is, those are individuals aged 60 years and above. And this is due to a rapid demographic transition where you see more and more elderly people. And sometimes you see an increasing number of children in some countries. So those patients with late-onset epilepsy, when you look carefully at what is the underlying etiology, what we notice is that in one in two individuals, this is due to cerebrovascular diseases. So this is huge. So stroke, cerebrovascular disease can contribute to one in two cases of late-onset epilepsy. And if you even look at the remaining patients with unknown etiology, it’s about one in three patients, there are some indications that some signals that they have some sort of occult cerebrovascular disease. So it’s frequent. Now, taking it globally, stroke is one of the leading causes of disability. If you have to add stroke disability to stroke and epilepsy, you just see how impactful the seizures will be on stroke survivors.
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