A new frontier in epilepsy: novel antiepileptogenic drugs.

Epilepsy is a hetergenous syndrome characterized by recurrently and repeatedly occurring seizures. Although able to inhibit the epileptic seizures, the currently available antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) have no effects on epileptogenesis. Such AEDs should be classified as drugs against ictogenesis, which are transient events in ion and/or receptor-gated channels related with triggering to evoke seizures. Epileptogenesis involves long-term and histological/biochemical/physiological alterations formed in brain structures over a long period, ranging from months to years. This review focuses on the effects of AEDs on epileptogenesis and novel candidates of antiepileptogenic drugs using a genetically defined epilepsy model animal, the spontaneous epileptic rat (SER).