An inventory of basic research in temporal lobe epilepsy

Temporal lobe epilepsy is a severe neurological disease, characterized by seizure occurrence and invalidating cognitive co-morbidities, which affects up to 1% of the adults. Roughly one third of the patients are resistant to any conventional pharmacological treatments. The last option in that case is the surgical removal of the epileptic focus, with no guarantee for clinical symptom alleviation. This state of affairs requests the identification of cellular or molecular targets for novel therapeutic approaches with limited side effects. Here we review some generalities about the disease as well as some of the most recent discoveries about the cellular and molecular mechanisms of TLE, and the latest perspectives for novel treatments.