Roughly 50 million people worldwide have epilepsy, about one in every 130. Scientists have identified more than 1,000 genes that, when disrupted, can individually cause it. And yet, more than half of patients whose epilepsy is suspected to be genetic never receive a genetic diagnosis.
Researchers at the Duncan Neurological Research Institute at Texas Children's Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine have proposed an explanation for part of that gap. In work announced on July 16, 2026, and published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, they report that epilepsy can be caused not only by a defect in a single gene but also by specific combinations of two or more defective genes acting together.
