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Epilepsy Research UK is the only national charity exclusively dedicated to funding research into the diagnosis, treatment, prevention and possible cure of epilepsy.  It has already allocated more than £4.5 million to research, largely made possible through voluntary donations.  But research into the condition is under-funded: there is still a long way to go in managing, preventing and curing this debilitating condition.  For more information on the charity and the research that we fund, please visit

Approximately 1 in 100 people in the UK is diagnosed with epilepsy; it is one of our most common neurological conditions.  Epilepsy can affect anyone, at any age, and for most there is no obvious cause.  It can take many different forms, from the terrifying ‘tonic clonic seizures', characterised by a loss of consciousness and violent dramatic convulsions, to ‘absence seizures’, which are momentary blank spells.  An epilepsy diagnosis increases significantly with age and although medication can control the seizures in some cases, for many it means that a normal life is simply impossible.

New drugs have been discovered, state-of-the-art brain scanning techniques are helping to identify how seizures spread throughout the brain, and epilepsy surgery is now safer as advances in technology mean only affected brain tissue is removed. However there is still much to do to build on the advances of the past 20 years.

Joan comes from a family of seven siblings, three of whom have epilepsy.  Joan herself was diagnosed with the condition at the age of 11.  Early medication did not control her seizures and severely affected her memory.  However, Joan's seizures are now controlled and she refuses to let her epilepsy get in the way of living her life to the full.

Twelve year old Rachel Christian was first diagnosed with epilepsy at the age of three after exhibiting severe recurrent seizures.  Following a ground-breaking operation in 2010 when a piece of tissue the size of a 20 pence piece was removed from her brain, she has shown no signs of a seizure. The transformation from a subdued and lethargic child has been dramatic and instant.