Five - 1995–2020: The Epilepsy Floods are Too Recent

Summary

In this period, the science and medicine of epilepsy continued to expand rapidly, and a selection of the leading theories and practices are described. There were significant scientific advances in relation to mechanisms of epileptogenesis and epilepsy-induced cerebral damage, including work on ion channels, neurotransmitters, cerebral networks and systems. There were major advances in the basic and clinical genetics of epilepsy. Other clinical developments occurred in fields including the epidemiology of epilepsy, status epilepticus, rare causes of epilepsy, the use of big data, and in drug and surgical treatment of epilepsy. Epilepsy research had become a worldwide phenomenon, and the medical literature on epilepsy expanded greatly. In the social sphere, too, epilepsy was changing. The Global Campaign Against Epilepsy raised the profile of the condition at governmental level internationally, and this was a period when political lobbying for epilepsy increased and when the voice of people with epilepsy could be strongly heard on social media and also, for the first time, in numerous memoirs and autobiographies by authors with epilepsy. Epilepsy now featured frequently in books and films, with a new realism and more sympathetic tone than in the past.