Study shows dogs can respond to both types of brain seizure

Reported by Susan Aldridge, PhD, medical journalist

Dogs that help people with seizures may not always be responding to an attack caused by epilepsy.
Dogs can be trained to predict and respond to seizures and often play a useful role in protecting someone when they are unconscious. Therefore people prone to seizures often use the services of a response dog. However, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, the fact that a response dog is helping a person does not mean they have epilepsy.

They studied seven people who had seizure response dogs. Epileptic seizures are marked by abnormal activity in the brain. In four of these cases, there was no such abnormal activity and they were diagnosed with psychological seizures. It is important that a distinction is made between seizures caused by epilepsy and those which are psychological, as they must be treated differently. Epilepsy will respond to specific medication but the psychological seizure will not be helped by this medication. Psychological seizures will, however, respond to counseling. Seizures must be properly diagnosed - and one cannot expect the dog to take on this task!

Source
Neurology 23rd January 2007

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