A research team led by a scientist at the University of California, Riverside, has found that brains treated with certain drugs within a few days of an injury have a dramatically reduced risk of developing epilepsy later in life.

The development of epilepsy is a major clinical complication after brain injury, and the disease can often take years to appear. 

“Working on rats, whose immune response system models that of humans, we identified that after brain injury a certain immune system receptor makes the brain more excitable, which promotes development of epilepsy,” said Viji Santhakumar, an associate professor of molecular, cell, and systems biology at UC Riverside and the lead author of the study that appears in the Annals of Neurobiology. “If this receptor can be suppressed, preferably within a day after injury, the future development of epilepsy can be reduced if not entirely prevented.”