Cardiac dysrhythmia associated with the immediate postictal state after maximal electroshock in freely moving rat.
OBJECTIVE
Cardiac autonomic changes accompany complex partial seizures and generalized tonic-clonic seizures, and participate, at least partially, in the sudden and unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP). The analysis of the heart rate variability (HRV) is one of the simplest ways of providing insight into autonomic functions. The entropy quantifies the repetition of complex patterns in a signal and refers to systems randomness, regularity, and predictability. Clinical investigations have reported that entropy decreases in patients with a high risk of sudden cardiac death. The goal of this study was to evaluate the effects of the maximal electroshock (MES) on the entropy of HRV, monitored in the immediate postictal stage in the model of the freely moving rat.


METHODS
Entropy changes were correlated with the high and low frequencies of spectral analysis, which reflect the participation of the sympathetic and parasympathetic activities.


RESULTS
MES-induced arrhythmia is characterized by an HRV increase, an imbalance in favor of the parasympathetic activity, and a decrease in the entropy. Entropy decrease was restricted to the duration of the arrhythmia, suggesting that the postictal arrhythmia may be associated with a higher risk of lethal cardiac complications. Nevertheless, entropy changes did not correlate with spectral changes.


CONCLUSIONS
The results suggest that the imbalance demonstrated in the spectral domain explains only partially the contribution of each autonomic system in the complexity of the heart rate during the postictal state.
Darbin
Olivier
O
Department of Neurology and Pharmacology, Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, Springfield, IL 62794-9637, U.S.A.
Casebeer
Doris J
DJ
Naritoku
Dean K
DK
D000818:Animals; D001145:Arrhythmias, Cardiac / Q000209:etiology* / Q000503:physiopathology; D004562:Electrocardiography; D004597:Electroshock; D019277:Entropy; D004827:Epilepsy / Q000150:complications* / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006339:Heart Rate; D008297:Male; D010275:Parasympathetic Nervous System / Q000503:physiopathology; D051381:Rats; D017207:Rats, Sprague-Dawley