Unraveling the genetics of common epilepsies: Approaches, platforms, and caveats

Abstract

With no known intervention to prevent or cure epilepsy, treatment is primarily symptomatic and requires long-term administration of medications to suppress seizure occurrence. Current antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) are ineffective in one-third of patients (Kwan and Brodie, 2000, [1]). Such therapeutic inadequacy is largely due to our insufficient understanding of the basic molecular pathophysiological processes that underlie epileptogenesis. Breakthroughs are needed in the identification of new molecular targets that will translate to novel intervention approaches.Discovering genetic variants that increase the susceptibility to disease is a promising avenue to identifying such targets. However, ..