Sudden Death In Epilepsy: Researchers Finger Possible Cause by Couzin-Frankel - Article Example

The paper "Sudden Death In Epilepsy: Researchers Finger Possible Cause by Couzin-Frankel" is a good example of an article on medical science. Couzin-Frankel authored the article titled “Sudden Death In Epilepsy: Researchers Finger Possible Cause” and in this article, the author talks about research that helped in identifying the shutting down of the brain stem can cause death amongst patients experiencing epilepsy. For years physicians have no idea what were the causes of sudden death amongst patients experiencing epilepsy. Sudden death is most common amongst patients who experience seizures which are quite severe in nature. The author states that it has been estimated that more than 3000 individuals who are patients of epilepsy are experiencing sudden death. The author has even reported previous studies that have identified that a patient who experiences sudden death even experienced the collapse of their entire cardiorespiratory system and their brain functionality even was found to be stopped. The authors state that the researchers were not convinced with the idea that the collapse of the cardiorespiratory system caused sudden death and there must be something else that was causing the failure of the system. In order to find the connection, researchers performed an experiment in which mice went through mutations of the potassium ion channel gene as well as mutations in the sodium ion channel gene and these mice were induced with seizures. The outcome of this experiment was that mice experienced depolarization of the region called brain stem and it damaged one of the most important brain tissues that were in control of the smooth functioning of breath as well as heart and this caused sudden death.