Beneficial Outcome of Urethane Treatment Following Status Epilepticus in a Rat Organophosphorus Toxicity Model

The efficacy of benzodiazepines to terminate electrographic status epilepticus (SE) declines the longer a patient is in SE. Therefore, alternative methods for ensuring complete block of SE and refractory SE are necessary. We compared the ability of diazepam and a subanesthetic dose of urethane to terminate prolonged SE and mitigate subsequent pathologies. Adult Sprague Dawley rats were injected with diisopropylfluorophosphate (DFP) to induce SE. Rats were administered diazepam (10 mg/kg, ip) or urethane (0.8 g/kg, s.c.) 1 h after DFP-induced SE and compared to rats that experienced uninterrupted SE. Large-amplitude and high-frequency spikes induced by DFP administration were quenched for at least 46 h in rats administered urethane 1 h after SE onset as demonstrated by cortical electroencephalography (EEG). By contrast, diazepam interrupted SE but seizures with high power in the 20- to 70-Hz band returned 6–10 h later. Urethane was more effective than diazepam at reducing hippocampal neurodegeneration, brain inflammation, gliosis and weight loss as measured on day 4 after SE. Furthermore, rats administered urethane displayed a 73% reduction in the incidence of spontaneous recurrent seizures after four to eight weeks and a 90% reduction in frequency of seizures in epileptic rats. By contrast, behavioral changes in the light/dark box, open field and a novel object recognition task were not improved by urethane. These findings indicate that in typical rodent SE models, it is the return of SE overnight, and not the initially intense 1–2 h of SE experience, that is largely responsible for neurodegeneration, accompanying inflammation, and the subsequent development of epilepsy.