WONOEP appraisal: Development of epilepsy biomarkers-What we can learn from our patients?

OBJECTIVE: Current medications for patients with epilepsy work in only two of three patients. For those medications that do work, they only suppress seizures. They treat the symptoms, but do not modify the underlying disease, forcing patients to take these drugs with significant side effects, often for the rest of their lives. A major limitation in our ability to advance new therapeutics that permanently prevent, reduce the frequency of, or cure epilepsy comes from a lack of understanding of the disease coupled with a lack of reliable biomarkers that can predict who has or who will get epilepsy.

METHODS: The main goal of this report is to present a number of approaches for identifying reliable biomarkers from observing patients with brain disorders that have a high probability of producing epilepsy.

RESULTS: A given biomarker, or more likely a profile of biomarkers, will have both a quantity and a time course during epileptogenesis that can be used to predict who will get the disease, to confirm epilepsy as a diagnosis, to identify coexisting pathologies, and to monitor the course of treatments.

SIGNIFICANCE: Additional studies in patients and animal models could identify common and clinically valuable biomarkers to successfully translate animal studies into new and effective clinical trials.