Mah-jong is having a moment in the United States. Yelp data show searches for mah-jong clubs up almost 4,500% from the year before, NPR's Here & Now reported in April. For a very small number of people, though, the tile game carries a strange medical risk: it is the one thing that reliably sets off their seizures.
Doctors call it mah-jong epilepsy, a rare type of reflex epilepsy in which seizures are triggered by playing, or even just watching, the game rather than by flashing lights or sounds. Hospital studies from China and Taiwan point to a simple remedy that works for many patients: stop playing.
