Epilepsy an Update on Disease Mechanisms: The Potential Role of MicroRNAs

So far, research on epilepsy mechanisms has been designed mainly using animal models and tracking down molecular mechanisms underlying seizures in that model. While this approach is clearly valuable, it can be questioned if it is the best possible. One attractive alternative approach may stem from the consideration of epilepsy as a complex disease of a very complex organ, the brain. This short review summarizes data from analyses of the alterations in expression of microRNAs and their target messenger RNAs in a specific brain subregion, the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus, in three experimental models of lesional epilepsy. The findings are discussed within the conceptual framework of complex systems.