Innate and Adaptive Immunity in Epileptogenesis of Childhood Epilepsy

The goal of this project is to determine if presence of inflammation in the seizing brain of young children would increase the likelihood of recurrent seizures that eventually leads to epilepsy. Approximately 1 in every 25 children will have at least one febrile seizure, which is convulsion bought on by a fever. One-third of these children will have additional febrile seizures, which is intrinsically associated with inflammation. This project, therefore, adopt a mouse model that recapitulates human epilepsy, to study whether manipulation of the inflammation can prevent the development of epilepsy and to identify novel targets for improved therapy.