Comparison within families

We use two approaches to find the genes causing CAE. The first requires large families, preferably with many affected family members.

We will compare persons with absence to healthy members of their family. This method will guide us to the potential locations of genes associated with CAE.

Comparison between CAE patients and Healthy People

Once we are close to finding the location of these genes we will use the second approach to zoom in on the gene.

Here small families or even single child families can help.

We will compare persons with absence to healthy people without seizures or a family history of seizures.

The CAE Study

The Childhood Absence Epilepsy Study is a National Institutes of Health, funded research study at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, to find the causes of Childhood Absence Epilepsy (CAE).

We are part of a group of researchers at Columbia concentrated on finding the causes of common epilepsies that also include other epilepsies like Juvenile Myoclonic Epilepsy (JME), and Benign Rolandic Epilepsy (BRE).

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