Schmidt Dieter, Sillanpää Matti
Epilepsy Research Group, Goethestr.5, Berlin, D- 14163, Germany.
Departments of Public Health and Child Neurology, University of Turku and Turku University Hospital, Turku, Finland.
Curr Neurol Neurosci Rep. 2016 Nov;16(11):95. doi: 10.1007/s11910-016-0695-9.
Epilepsy is a common brain disease and preventing epilepsy is a very relevant public health concern and an urgent unmet need. Although 40 % of all epilepsy cases are thought to have acquired causes, there is a roadblock for successful prevention. Efforts to protect the brain from epileptogenic insults are severely hampered by our lack of biomarkers to identify the few percent at high risk meriting treatment among those exposed. Preventing brain injury has been moderately effective from around birth to middle age; however, the strategy has failed to stop a substantial increase over the last decades in symptomatic epilepsy in those aged 65 and above. The traditional concept of repurposing anti-seizure drugs used for symptomatic seizure relief to prevent the onset of epilepsy has completely failed up to now. More recently, however, hope is on the horizon with a search for biomarkers and discovery of a new class of agents, called anti-epileptogenic drugs, which were specifically developed for prevention of epilepsy.
癫痫是一种常见的脑部疾病，预防癫痫是一个非常相关的公共卫生问题，也是一个迫切未得到满足的需求。尽管所有癫痫病例中40%被认为有后天病因，但成功预防存在障碍。由于缺乏生物标志物来识别在暴露人群中少数值得治疗的高风险个体，保护大脑免受致痫性损伤的努力受到严重阻碍。从出生到中年，预防脑损伤有一定效果；然而，在过去几十年里，该策略未能阻止65岁及以上人群中症状性癫痫的大幅增加。将用于缓解症状性癫痫发作的抗癫痫药物重新用于预防癫痫发作的传统概念到目前为止完全失败了。然而，最近，随着生物标志物的寻找和一类名为抗癫痫发生药物的新型药物的发现，带来了希望，这类药物是专门为预防癫痫而开发的。
