Age-dependent mortality in the pilocarpine model of status epilepticus

• Published in: Neuroscience letters Vol. 453; no. 3; pp. 233 - 237
• Main Authors: Blair, Robert E., Deshpande, Laxmikant S., Holbert, William H., Churn, Severn B., DeLorenzo, Robert J.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Shannon Elsevier Ireland Ltd 10.04.2009; Elsevier
• Subjects: Age; Age Factors; Animals; Biological and medical sciences; Convulsants; Development; Electroencephalography; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Headache. Facial pains. Syncopes. Epilepsia. Intracranial hypertension. Brain oedema. Cerebral palsy; Male; Medical sciences; Mortality; Nervous system (semeiology, syndromes); Neurology; Pilocarpine; Rats; Rats, Sprague-Dawley; Senescence; Sprague–Dawley rats; Status epilepticus; Status Epilepticus - chemically induced; Status Epilepticus - mortality; Status Epilepticus - physiopathology; Vertebrates: nervous system and sense organs; Senescence; Sprague–Dawley rats; Mortality; Development; Pilocarpine; Status epilepticus; Age; Nervous system diseases; Rat; Epilepsy; Rodentia; Cerebral disorder; Vertebrata; Sprague-Dawley rats; Mammalia; Animal; Central nervous system disease; Models
• ISSN: 0304-3940; 1872-7972
• DOI: 10.1016/j.neulet.2009.02.035

Status epilepticus (SE) is an acute neurological emergency associated with significant morbidity and mortality. Age has been shown to be a critical factor in determining outcome after SE. Understanding the causes of this increased mortality with aging by developing an animal model to study this condition would play a major role in studying mechanisms to limit the mortality due to SE. Here we employed pilocarpine to induce SE in rats aged between 5 and 28 weeks. Similar to clinical studies in man, we observed that age was a significant predictor of mortality following SE. While no deaths were observed in 5-week-old animals, mortality due to SE increased progressively with age and reached 90% in 28-week-old animals. There was no correlation between the age of animals and severity of SE. With increasing age mortality occurred earlier after the onset of SE. These results indicate that pilocarpine-induced SE in the rat provides a useful model to study age-dependent SE-induced mortality and indicates the importance of using animal models to elucidate the mechanisms contributing to SE-induced mortality and the development of novel therapeutic interventions to prevent SE-induced death.