Research
How epilepsy develops after an insult to the brain is not fully understood, and gaining such understanding may help researchers find ways to prevent it, or make it less severe or easier to treat. Researchers hope to identify biomarkers, biological indications that epileptogenesis is occurring, as a means to find drugs that can target pathways by which epilepsy develops. For example, drugs could be developed to interfere with secondary brain injury (injury that does not occur at the moment of trauma but results from processes initiated by it), by blocking pathways such as free radical damage to brain tissue. An increase in understanding of age differences in epilepsy development after trauma may also help researchers find biomarkers of epileptogenesis. There is also interest in finding more antiepileptic drugs, with the potential to interfere with epileptogenesis. Some new antiepileptic drugs such as topiramate, gabapentin, and lamotrigine have already been developed and have shown promise in treatment of PTE. No animal model has all the characteristics of epileptogenesis in humans, so research efforts aim to identify one. Such a model may help researchers find new treatments and identify the processes involved in epileptogenesis.
Read more about this topic: Post-traumatic Epilepsy
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