Center for Translational Neuroscience

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Center for Translational Neuroscience
Distinguished Speaker Series
Rayford Auditorium, Biomed II Bldg.
Tuesday, September 30, 12 noon
Progressive development of spontaneous seizures
in experimental epilepsy F. Edward Dudek,
Ph.D. Professor and Chair Department of
Physiology University of Utah School of
Medicine Salt Lake City, UT
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Epilepsy may be a progressive disorder, although
progression is likely to be obscured by
anticonvulsant treatment in humans with acquired
epilepsy. These experiments aimed to test the
hypothesis that epileptogenesis is a continuous
function of time after injury and continues after
the latent period to the first seizure. Using
nearly continuous hippocampal recordings with
radiotelemetry, electrographic seizure frequency
was analyzed quantitatively for 100 days after
kainate-induced status epilepticus in adult rats.
Seizure frequency progressively increased as a
sigmoid function of time. These data support the
hypothesis that epileptogensis is a progressive
process that continues to develop well beyond the
first spontaneous seizure, and suggests that the
window for anti-epileptogenic therapeutic regimes
aimed at reducing the progressive worsening of
the epilepsy extends well beyond the latent
period.