Epilepsy affects tens of millions of people worldwide, but the causes of epileptic seizures remain largely unknown. New research may have found a micro-gene that explains why some brains develop epileptic seizures while others do not.

Share on Pinterest New research finds a specific short segment of RNA that may be responsible for protecting the brain against seizures.

Epilepsy is a neurological disease that affects more than 5 million people in the United States, including children and adults. Worldwide, the number of people affected by epilepsy is as high as 50 million.

The condition manifests itself through recurrent seizures, which can sometimes be accompanied by a temporary loss of consciousness or convulsions.

These seizures can have genetic causes or can be triggered by different kinds of neural injury. All brains are prone to generating seizures, but the reasons why some brains do not develop them remain unknown.

For instance, although epilepsy can be developed as a result of having an ischemic stroke, only some of the people who have this type of stroke will go on to develop the condition. This suggests that there are other factors at play.

New research, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, may have found one of these factors in the form of a micro-gene.

Prof. Hermona Soreq, from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel, started out from the hypothesis that healthy brains do not have seizures when exposed to flashing lights or other triggers because of so-called short RNAs, otherwise known as rapidly inducible microRNAs.

MicroRNAs are a class of RNA – that is, one of the macromolecules needed for all forms of life, together with DNA and proteins – that have the ability to suppress the genetic expression of certain proteins.