Scientists discover dual-gene pathway behind half of unexplained epilepsy cases

For decades, more than half of all people with epilepsy have carried a diagnosis of silence — their seizures real, their genetic cause invisible to every test. Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine have now found that epilepsy can arise not from a single broken gene, but from two defective genes conspiring through a newly mapped pathway linking the cell's structural scaffolding, its energy systems, and its chemical messengers. The discovery does not merely name a mechanism; it opens a door for millions of people worldwide who have lived with seizures that medicine could not yet explain.