Proteomic profiling of the rat hippocampus from the kindling models of electrical epilepsy and treatment with low-frequency deep brain stimulation: the important role of the cytoskeleton.

Epilepsy is one of the most common neurological diseases and affects 1–2% of the world's population. Epilepsy is associated with recurrent and unpredictable seizures. Since 20% of epileptic patients suffer from drug resistance, much research is being done to find new ways to treat epilepsy. One of the new therapies is low-frequency deep brain stimulation (L-DBS). Although this method has an anticonvulsant effect and is used as a new method for the treatment of drug-resistant epilepsy, the mechanism of its action is still unclear. Understanding the changes in the amount of expression of proteins and enzymes in the nervous system following the induction of L-DBS is helpful for understanding the mechanism of effects of L-DBS. In this study, rats were first kindled (Common laboratory model of seizures and epilepsy) by electrical kindling (kindled group) and then received the L-DBS (kindled + L-DBS group). Comparison and analysis of the proteome of kindled and L-DBS-treated rats were performed by comparative proteomics using two-dimensional gel electrophoresis. We observed that electrical kindling induced changes in a series of proteins, that normalized by L-DBS. We identified 23 of these proteins as a sample by MALDI TOF/TOF. The protein–protein interaction network was also drawn for these 23 proteins. The most important pathway attributed to these proteins is the cytoskeleton pathway. Our results showed that the cytoskeleton after destruction by electrical kindling was restored to the normal by L-DBS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]