What is epilepsy?

Epilepsy is one of the most common and disabling chronic neurological disorders and currently affects more than 50 million people worldwide, including 3.4 million in the US and 3.2 million people in the EU.

There is a significant medical need as approximately 30 percent of patients are insensitive to treatment by conventional epilepsy medicines.
Epilepsy affects all age groups and is characterized by an enduring predisposition to generate epileptic seizures with the associated cognitive, psychological, and social consequences as well as increased mortality.
Epilepsy is not a specific disease, or even a single syndrome, but rather a complex group of disorders with widely varying types of epileptic seizures that can originate from epileptic activity in a local area in the brain (focal onset seizures) or arise from epileptic activity throughout the brain (generalized seizures). In rare cases the condition may develop to status epilepticus, a potentially life-threatening condition with prolonged continuous seizure activity.

The etiology of epilepsy includes a variety of causes including genetic mutations, autoimmune diseases as well as acquired cases such as stroke, traumatic brain injury, and infectious diseases of the brain.

Since epilepsy results from aberrant electrical activity in the brain, it is not surprising that ion channels are involved both in the generation of epilepsy and are attractive targets for the development of new epilepsy medicines.