Sanjay Sisodiya

Professor Sanjay Sisodiya is Director of Genomic Research at Epilepsy Society and founding member of Epilepsy Climate Change (EPICC).

"I did a project at school, during the last century, about using plants to clean polluted water, and another in which I learnt that lichen are great indicators of air quality. My concern for the environment stayed with me, but I did not link that private occupation with my professional life until some people with severe, often genetic, epilepsies and their families started to tell me how bad their conditions became during recent heatwaves. That moment of connection was a revelation, a realisation that I had some agency in the challenge of climate change, through my clinical and research work in epilepsy. 

People with some rare genetic epilepsies have seizures that can be precipitated by high ambient temperatures, rapid temperature changes, or fevers. Many more people with (the more common) epilepsies will have more seizures when their sleep is disrupted. Individual resilience to change may be impaired in epilepsy. 

Climate change will affect many aspects of life and it seems likely that people with epilepsy will be among the first to feel the effects. This led me to start EpilepsyClimateChange and look in more detail at what might happen"