How do people develop epilepsy?
In most cases — about seven in 10 people — the cause of epilepsy is unknown. In other cases, epilepsy can have a symptomatic cause, such as birth injuries, head injuries, and infectious diseases including meningitis and encephalitis. It can also be caused by genetic conditions and stroke. “Whatever the cause, epilepsy causes too many nerve cells to fire in the brain at the same time,” says Donald Olson, MD, director of the Epilepsy Program at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford University Medical Center.
