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Role of Inflammation in Neurological Disorders Associated with Epilepsy

It is well known that inflammation has a important role in the pathogenesis of diverse neurodegenerative disorders. There are also growing numbers of evidences that inflammation is involved in the pathogenesis of epilepsy. For many decades, implication of brain inflammation to epilepsy has been suggested by the effectiveness of anti-inflammatory medications in treating intractable pediatric epilepsies, increased incidence of spontaneous epilepsy in autoimmune disorders, and increased level of proinflammatory cytokines in the blood of patients who experienced recent seizures. Recently, activation of microglia and astrocytes and production of proinflammatory cytokines and related molecules have been reported in surgically resected brain tissue from epilepsy patients as well as from experimental animals of epilepsy models. These evidences suggest that inflammatory process may contribute to epileptogenesis and to neuronal injury after seizures. Thus we provide a review of current understandings about implication of brain inflammation to diverse neurological disorders associated with epilepsy.