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Studies in the general population have shown that the aging process changes brain functioning and cognition [2] and there is now much interest in discovering ways to protect the brain and cognition with aging. Through multiple grants funded by CURE Epilepsy including a CURE Innovator Award, a CURE Epilepsy Award, and an Epilepsy Research Continuity Fund Award, Drs. Bruce Hermann at the University of Wisconsin and Matti Sillanpää at the University of Turku studied a unique patient population of individuals with childhood-onset epilepsy (COE) to investigate neurological and cognitive outcomes 55 years after the initial diagnosis [1].
Earlier studies with this same group (at 50 years after the initial diagnosis) showed that while seizure outcomes in this population were excellent, subsets of people with COE showed some signs of possible neurological and cognitive decline [3, 4]. However, the apparent declines could have been due to multiple factors including epilepsy, aging that was intensified by epilepsy, or simply longstanding abnormalities independent of aging. To get further clarity, Drs. Hermann and Sillanpää recruited many of the same individuals five years after the previous study (i.e., 55 years after the initial diagnosis) [1] to describe the seizure and neurological status of this population and identify the prospective changes at 55 years post-initial diagnosis by comparison to their status at 50 years post-initial diagnosis [4].
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