title: Epilepsy comorbidities: how can animal models help?
abstract: An epilepsy comorbidity is a condition or disorder that occurs at a frequency greater than chance in a person with epilepsy. Examples of common epilepsy comorbidities are depression, anxiety, and intellectual disability. Epilepsy comorbidities can be quite disabling, sometimes affecting a patient's quality of life to a greater extent than seizures. Animal models offer the opportunity to explore shared pathophysiological mechanisms, therapeutic options, and consequences of both the epilepsy syndrome and a given comorbidity. In this chapter, depression is used as an example of how animal models can inform translational questions about epilepsy comorbidities.
authors.affiliation: Departments of Neurology and Pediatrics, University of Wisconsin, Centennial Building 7176, 1685 Highland Avenue, Madison, WI, 53705, USA, stafstrom@neurology.wisc.edu.
authors.forename: Carl E
authors.initials: CE
authors.lastname: Stafstrom
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D003863:Depression / Q000150:complications; D004827:Epilepsy / Q000150:complications* / Q000523:psychology; D023421:Models, Animal