Disease Prevention and Modification

Identification of a therapy that can prevent, or modify epilepsy is a major goal of the epilepsy community. The aim of disease prevention research is to identify therapies that when given after a precipitating event for a limited time period prevent the development of epilepsy. To identify therapies that can modify or cure epilepsy, an investigational treatment is initiated after the disease is established and its ability to prevent seizures from reoccurring, reduce seizure burden, and alter responsiveness of drug resistant seizures is measured in absence of further treatment (Kaminski et al., 2014, Pitkänen et al., 2015; Loscher, 2020; Galanopoulou et al., 2021).

References

Galanopoulou AS, Löscher W, Lubbers L, O’Brien TJ, Staley K, Vezzani A, D’Ambrosio R, White HS, Sontheimer H, Wolf JA, Twyman R, Whittemore V, Wilcox KS, Klein B. Antiepileptogenesis and disease modification: Progress, challenges and the path forward. Report of the preclinical working group of the 2018 NINDS-sponsored antiepileptogenesis and disease modification workshop. Epilepsia Open. 2021

Kaminski RM, Rogawski MA, Klitgaard H. The potential of antiseizure drugs and agents that act on novel molecular targets as antiepileptogenic treatments. Neurotherapeutics. 2014;11:385-400

Löscher W. The holy grail of epilepsy prevention: Preclinical approaches to antiepileptogenic treatments. Neuropharmacology. 2020;167:107605

Pitkänen A, Lukasiuk K, Dudek FE, Staley KJ. Epileptogenesis. Cold Spring Harb Perspect Med. 2015;5:a022822