What are the common causes of epilepsy?
Some common causes of epilepsy in children are cerebral palsy (most often due to complications related to child birth), infections of the brain, metabolic and certain systemic diseases, any structural disease of the brain, head trauma and certain hereditary diseases. In adults structural brain disease, trauma, infections, toxins etc. are more often the cause. It must be remembered that in about 50% of cases of epilepsy, no cause can be determined even with the best of technology available today and the epilepsy is believed to be “idiopathic” in these cases. The “idiopathic” epilepsies are currently believed to have a genetic basis in their etiology.
