Blair Robert E, Deshpande Laxmikant S, Holbert William H, Churn Severn B, DeLorenzo Robert J
Department of Neurology, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA 23298, USA.
Neurosci Lett. 2009 Apr 10;453(3):233-7. doi: 10.1016/j.neulet.2009.02.035. Epub 2009 Feb 21.
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.
癫痫持续状态（SE）是一种急性神经急症，与显著的发病率和死亡率相关。年龄已被证明是决定SE后预后的关键因素。通过建立动物模型来研究这种情况，了解随着年龄增长死亡率增加的原因，将在研究限制SE所致死亡率的机制中发挥重要作用。在此，我们使用毛果芸香碱诱导5至28周龄大鼠发生SE。与人类临床研究相似，我们观察到年龄是SE后死亡率的重要预测因素。5周龄动物未观察到死亡，而SE所致死亡率随年龄逐渐增加，28周龄动物达到90%。动物年龄与SE严重程度之间无相关性。随着年龄增长，SE发作后死亡出现得更早。这些结果表明，毛果芸香碱诱导的大鼠SE为研究年龄依赖性SE诱导的死亡率提供了一个有用的模型，并表明使用动物模型阐明导致SE诱导死亡率的机制以及开发预防SE诱导死亡的新型治疗干预措施的重要性。
