US senator Edward Kennedy is being treated in hospital after suffering a seizure yesterday.
The 76-year-old was rushed from the family vacation compound at Hyannisport, Massachusetts, to Cape Cod Hospital at 9 am, before being airlifted to Boston.
"Over the next couple of days, Senator Kennedy will undergo further evaluation to determine the cause of the seizure, and a course of treatment will be determined at that time," his doctor, Larry Ronan, said in a statement.
Kennedy, youngest brother of assassinated US President John F Kennedy, was resting comfortably, watching a Boston Red Sox baseball game with family and "not in any immediate danger", Ronan said.
Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, after talking with Kennedy's wife, Vicki, told reporters that the senator "will be fine" and had "woke up fighting" after the seizure, a Reid aide said.
The Boston Globe reported Kennedy suffered one seizure at his Cape Cod home and a second seizure aboard the helicopter transport flight to Boston.
Family members gathered at the hospital earlier in the day amid uncertainty over the long-serving Massachusetts senator's condition, including his three children and his nephew Joseph Kennedy, eldest son of assassinated senator Robert Kennedy.
Kennedy, the second-longest serving member of the current US Senate, is a leading liberal voice in U.S. politics and has actively campaigned for Barack Obama in his bid to become the Democratic nominee in the November presidential election.
"As I've said many times before, Ted Kennedy is a giant in American political history. He's done more for the health care of others than just about anybody in history," Obama told reporters during a visit to a hospital in Eugene, Oregon.
"We are going to be rooting for him, and I, I insist on being optimistic about how it's going to turn out."
Campaigning in Kentucky, Obama's rival for the Democratic nomination Hillary Clinton offered her wishes for the senator's quick recovery.
Kennedy came to the Senate in November 1962 to fill a seat earlier held by his older brother, then President John Kennedy. He currently serves as chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labour and Pensions.
He ran for president in 1980, but his White House ambitions had never recovered from Chappaquiddick, the July 1969 accident when his car plunged off a bridge on a Massachusetts island and a young woman riding with him, Mary Jo Kopechne, drowned.
Kennedy lost the 1980 party nomination to Jimmy Carter who failed in his bid for a second White House term.
Reuters