Peripheral blood expression profiles of patients with epilepsy receiving and not receiving antiepileptic drug monotherapy and their differential response to the treatment.

The aim here was to identify mRNA expression biomarkers associated with the disease epilepsy and the antiepileptic drug response. Gene expression profiles of drug-naïve patients with epilepsy were compared with that of healthy controls. The profiles were significantly different between the two groups as well as patients with different epilepsy types i.e. idiopathic, symptomatic and cryptogenic. Besides, patients showing differential response to antiepileptic monotherapies were also having differential blood gene expression profiles. Total RNA obtained from peripheral blood samples of 34 drug-naïve patients with epilepsy and 57 followed-up patients showing differential response to antiepileptic drug monotherapy along with 50 healthy subjects as control group.