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  • OUTLOOK

Gene therapy targets epilepsy

Anti-seizure medication doesn’t work in every person with epilepsy. But a treatment option is emerging that would spare the need for brain surgery.
  1. Liam Drew

    1. Liam Drew is a freelance science writer in London.

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Elizabeth Nicholson and Dimitri Kullmann at University College London. Credit: David Bishop/UCL Health Creatives

The seizures of around one-third of people with epilepsy are resistant to available medicines — a statistic that haunts neurology. It has been this way for decades. The medicines have got better by becoming safer and causing fewer side effects. But still there are people for whom the drugs simply don’t work — and for them, epilepsy can be ruinous.

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Nature 564, S10-S11 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-07644-y

This article is part of Nature Outlook: Gene therapy, an editorially independent supplement produced with the financial support of third parties. About this content.

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