[Epilepsy as a dynamic condition: facilitation and inhibition, establishment and remission]

Epilepsy should not be seen as a stable chronic illness but as a condition that undergoes changes over time, due to antagonistic factors which facilitate or counteract seizures. Some of these are known, and their action can best be observed at onset, when seizure repetition is established or prevented, and at remission, when the decline of the antiepileptic drug therapeutic threshold reflects a fall in the propensity to seizures. A quantitative model is proposed which can explain much of the observed variability.