Suffocation was written on his death certificate and it was only through assiduous research on Sudep that Ms Hanna found out the

Suffocation was written on his death certificate, and it was only through assiduous research on Sudep that Ms Hanna found out the real cause of his death.Her struggle for the truth led her to found a support group, Epilepsy Bereaved, with Catherine Brookes, who lost her 21-year-old son to Sudep in 1991. The effect is similar to a morphine overdose - the victim stops breathing. Dr Brown believes that sudden unexpected death in epilepsy is probably caused by a combination of the two.Jane Hanna, an Oxford don, lost her partner, Alan, suddenly in December 1990 He had had epilepsy for just seven months. If this finding is confirmed, I will set up a study to see whether putting people with a lengthened Q-T wave on a heart drug could cut deaths."Another theory being studied by scientists is that during a seizure the brain discharges its store of endorphins, naturally occurring substances that resemble morphine. If the interval is too long, it can cause the heart to become fatally unstable."We have been able to show that in at least some people with epilepsy who have diedsuddenly their Q-T interval was lengthened when they had an epileptic discharge," says Dr Brown "This is not true in patients who are still alive. This in turn leads to ventricular fibrillation, a condition where the heart is hardly beating at all.An electrically recorded heart wave has five components, known as PQRST; the interval between the Q and T waves is called the Q-T interval. Preliminary analysis, he says, suggests that abnormal brain discharges during a seizure can in some cases lead to ventricular tachycardia, an abnormally fast heartbeat.

Early next year he will publish the interim results of a study comparing the heart and brain waves of people who died of Sudep with those of living epilepsy sufferers. "They find nothing abnormal in the body and they strain to find a cause of death. For years there's been this myth of a pillow that suffocates epileptics. There's not a shred of evidence that anyone has suffocated on a pillow."Dr Brown is one of the few scientists worldwide looking into the causes of sudden death in epilepsy. Most are found dead in their bedrooms and are thought to die during sleep.

Their deaths frequently come as a shock to their families and doctors, who are often unaware of the risk."Many pathologists conducting post-mortems in these cases are very puzzled by Sudep," he says. Victims tend to be young - Sudep is the most common cause of death in people with epilepsy under 40 - and they are more likely to be men than women. He had not had an accident or fallen, as is sometimes the case; he had simply died of the condition itself. "He was perfectly healthy otherwise; the doctors said it wasn't a heart attack," says Fiona. "They told me raised hormone levels in his blood indicated a seizure."On the surface, Andrew Gould would seem one of the least likely candidates to die of an epileptic fit. Like many people with epilepsy, he had managed to lead a normal life; before the one which killed him, he had suffered only four grand mal episodes, the last when he was 21."I was just stunned by Andrew's death and I still am," says Fiona.

"With any other illness you would be told the prognosis and all the facts, but with epilepsy it's constantly covered up. Even our GP wasn't aware that you could die from it."Mr Gould was one of up to 1,500 people in Britain estimated to die each year from a little-known condition called Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy (Sudep). An ambitious young man with a promising career as an engineer ahead of him, Mr Gould was working away from his home in the Midlands. It was to be his last telephone call home: the next morning, hotel staff found him dead on the floor of his bedroom Mr Gould, 29, died of an epileptic seizure. Until then, he's just one of 60 suspected serial killers in America who could strike again at any time.. One warm summer's evening three years ago, Andrew Gould telephoned his wife, Fiona, from a small hotel in the south of England to catch up on news of his two small children.