Wide therapeutic time-window of low-frequency stimulation at the subiculum for temporal lobe epilepsy treatment in rats.
Low-frequency stimulation (LFS) has been considered as an option for the treatment of intractable epilepsy. However, previous data showed that LFS of certain brain regions only exerts its effect within a very narrow therapeutic time window, which lasts from seconds to tens of seconds, thus restricting its clinical application. The present study was designed to determine whether there exists a target with a wider therapeutic window for LFS treatment. Therefore, evoked seizures in the rat were induced by amygdala kindling and spontaneous seizures were induced by pilocarpine. The effects of different modes of LFS at the subiculum on the progression and severity of evoked seizures and the frequency of spontaneous seizure were evaluated. We found that (i) LFS at 1Hz delivered to the subiculum before and immediately after the kindling stimulations, or after the cessation of afterdischarge (afterdischarge duration, ADD) decreased the seizure stages and shortened the ADD both in seizure acquisition and expression in amygdaloid-kindled seizures. In addition, even LFS delivered after duration of double the ADD prolonged the kindling progression. (ii) LFS delivered at 1Hz, but not 0.5, 3 or 130Hz, immediately after the cessation of kindling stimulations retarded the progression of kindling seizures. (iii) Pilocarpine-induced spontaneous seizures were completely inhibited by 1Hz LFS. Thus, these results demonstrated that LFS of the subiculum has a wide therapeutic time-window for temporal lobe epilepsy treatment in rats, suggesting that the subiculum may be a promising and suitable target for clinical application.
Department of Pharmacology, Key Laboratory of Medical Neurobiology of the Ministry of Health of China, Zhejiang Province Key Laboratory of Neurobiology, College of Pharmaceutical Sciences, School of Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China.
Kai
K
Zhong
Deng-Chang
DC
Wu
Miao-Miao
MM
Jin
Zheng-Hao
ZH
Xu
Yi
Y
Wang
Wei-Wei
WW
Hou
Xiao-Ming
XM
Li
Shi-Hong
SH
Zhang
Zhong
Z
Chen
D000679:Amygdala / Q000503:physiopathology; D000818:Animals; D046690:Deep Brain Stimulation / Q000379:methods*; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D018450:Disease Progression; D004567:Electrodes, Implanted; D004833:Epilepsy, Temporal Lobe / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000628:therapy*; D006624:Hippocampus / Q000503:physiopathology*; D007696:Kindling, Neurologic / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D051381:Rats; D017207:Rats, Sprague-Dawley; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D013997:Time Factors; D016896:Treatment Outcome