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Seizure AlertŪ Dogs Reduce Seizure Frequency

Dogs trained to warn humans when they are about to have an epileptic seizure may actually reduce the frequency with which the individuals experience seizures.

V. Strong, from Support Dogs, Chapeltown, Sheffield, United Kingdom, and colleagues have already demonstrated that dogs can be trained to recognize specific features that precede an epileptic seizure in humans and provide an overt signal as a warning. In an effort to determine whether such warnings may actually reduce seizure frequency, they prospectively studied ten consecutive referrals to their Seizure Alert DogsŪ service for people who experienced tonic-clonic seizures.

The investigators monitored seizure frequency in the ten epileptic patients for 12 weeks before entry into the study, 12 weeks during a training period with a seizure alert dog, and during 24 weeks of follow-up after the training period. When they compared seizure frequency during the baseline 12 week period to seizure frequency during the last 12 weeks of the follow-up period, they found a mean reduction of 43 percent (p=0.002). Nine out of the ten patients had a 34 percent or greater reduction, four of ten had a 50 percent or greater reduction, and only one had no improvement in seizure frequency.

Examining the pattern of change in seizure frequency, the investigators discovered that there was a small but significant drop in frequency during the first four weeks of training (p=0.0078) followed by a further drop between the first and last four weeks of training (p=0.038). This reduction in seizure frequency remained during the entire 24-week follow-up period.
Seizure 2002 Sep;11(6):402. "Effect of trained Seizure Alert DogsŪ on frequency of tonic-clonic seizures"

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