Recently an epilepsy & seizure awareness group was formed. This is a diary in the series that will talk about origins and progress of the Epilepsy Research Benchmarks so that you can find out about what the research community is doing about curing epilepsy! Follow me past the little decorative symbol to find out about what's going on.
Back in 2000, the Clinton White House (remember that!), along with Citizen's United for Research in Epilepsy (CURE), the NIH, the American Epilepsy Society, the epilepsy foundation of america and a few other organizations joined forces to sponsor the very first Curing Epilepsy conference. This was a life changing conference for me. I stopped thinking about merely mitigating seizure activity to thinking about ways in which my research could cure epilepsy. And as Susan Axelrod (the main instigator of the meeting!) likes to say, end up with "No seizures, no side effects."
At that revolutionary meeting, a group was formed to set up appropriate research benchmarks to guide investigators in tackling the problems that are most germane to those with epilepsy. In 2007, the second Curing Epilepsy conference updated and changed the benchmarks and you can look at those here. There are three main research benchmarks and they are:
Benchmarks Area I - Prevent epilepsy and its progression.
Benchmarks Area II: Develop new therapeutic strategies and optimize current approaches to cure epilepsy.
Benchmarks Area III: Prevent, limit, and reverse the co-morbidities associated with epilepsy and its treatment.
Each of the benchmarks have a number of sub Aims that are viewed as vital to the overall understanding of the broader titles. And every year, the benchmark stewards (full disclosure, i am a steward) are responsible for developing a report describing the advances that have been made, either in the lab or the clinic, that directly address the benchmarks and if interested, you can access the latest report here!
In my laboratory, we address mostly Benchmark Area 2. We focus on the preclinical development of novel anticonvulsant medicines (which just stop seizures, doesn't cure epilepsy), how CNS infections and brain inflammation can contribute to epilepsy (better understanding can lead to new therapeutic approaches), and how astrocytes, a type of support cell in the cns, can influence neural network behavior in epileptic brain circuits.
Overall, the epilepsy research community is making great strides, but I think perhaps the most amazing and rapid progress has taken place in the field of genetics. Over 120 different genes are now known to either directly result or contribute to the development of epilepsy in patients at risk. And in some cases, individual genes can have over 100 different types of mutations, like in Dravet Syndrome, a particularly devastating form of childhood epilepsy. These mutations can be inherited, but many occur spontaneously. There are a number of major NIH initiatives related to the genes that are involved in epilepsy. For example, the Epilepsy Phenome/Genome Project is currently recruiting individuals who do have epilepsy and have siblings or parents who also have epilepsy. It is hoped that this study can help to identify more gene mutations that leads to epilepsy.
So on that note, I will stop here. Let us know what you would like to see addressed in this diary series! Peace out and consider donating to your favorite epilepsy organization.