Early, but not late, antiepileptic treatment reduces relapse of sound-induced seizures in the post-ischemic rat.

Global ischemia was used to induce a sensitivity to sound-triggered generalized seizures in 24 male Long-Evans rats. All showed a generalized seizure when exposed to a 108 dB bell for 1 min. They were assigned randomly to 3 groups of 8, and received 30 additional sound exposures. The early treatment group was injected with valproate (200 mg/kg i.p) 1 h prior to each of the first 10 sound exposures. The late treatment group received the same treatment during the second set of 10 sound exposures after 10 sound exposures without treatment. The third group was untreated. Both early and late treated groups had a significant reduction in seizure incidence during the treatment period, i.e. both groups showed seizure control. However, in the late group seizures returned promptly when valproate treatment was discontinued, while the early group showed a sustained reduction in seizure susceptibility. Since this outcome corresponds to seizure remission, the findings of this study favor early treatment.