Abstract
The subject of influence of hormones in epilepsy in the elderly is of great interest. Age-related deficit of certain endogenous neuroactive steroid hormones may result in the loss of physiological antiseizure (antiepileptic) potential in the aged brain. Androgen’s antiseizure action is of interest as testosterone showed antiseizure effects in humans and also in experimental models of epilepsy. The androgen steroid dehydrepiandrosterone (DHEA) is of particular interest as its levels decline with aging/senescence, and it has been found to exert antiepileptic effects besides its antiaging actions. This paper focuses on the antiepileptic action of DHEA as an example of androgen hormones’ antiseizure action. Experimentally, DHEA treatment of iron-induced epileptic rats (an experimental model of post-traumatic clinical epilepsy) prevented development of electrographic seizure activity, and countered seizure-associated cognitive dysfunctions, oxidative stress alterations, sodium pump activity changes, glutamate levels elevation, and glutamate transporters down regulation. DHEA may thus have a promising therapeutic profile for the treatment of epilepsy in the elderly.
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Authors are thankful to UGC (for Dr. D.S. kothari fellowship to MM), ICMR, DST and CSIR for financial supports.
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Mishra, M., Singh, R., Sharma, D. (2017). Antiaging Neurosteroid Dehydroepiandrosterone Counters Epileptiform Activity in Iron-Induced Experimental Epilepsy. In: Rath, P., Sharma, R., Prasad, S. (eds) Topics in Biomedical Gerontology. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-2155-8_17
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