What Epilepsy Comorbidities Are Important to Model in the Laboratory? Clinical Perspectives

Abstract

In recent years, there has been a focus on studies of comorbidity in epilepsy. The concept of epilepsy comorbidity is complex. This is partly because epilepsy is essentially a symptom for which there are many underlying causes, with multiple genetic and environmental influences. These causal conditions themselves carry comorbidities which vary from condition to condition. The fact that some psychiatric comorbidities are 'bidirectional' complicates this further. These issues reduce the usefulness of any unitary study of 'epilepsy comorbidity'. Epilepsy comorbidities can be divided into direct/indirect and somatic/psychiatric categories. Only some aspects are susceptible to experimental modeling. This chapter briefly reviews the clinical studies of cause, frequency, epidemiology and mortality of comorbidities, and their use as biomarkers for epilepsy. © 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.