Effects of the Novel Antiepileptic Drug Levetiracetam on Spontaneous Recurrent Seizures in the Rat Pilocarpine Model of Temporal Lobe Epilepsy

Summary:  Purpose: Animal models in which seizures are elicited by chemical or electrical means are commonly used for identification and preclinical testing of novel antiepileptic drugs (AEDs). Such models have been successful in discovering all the new AEDs. However, despite the high efficacy of AEDs against elicited seizures in rodent models, a significant proportion of epilepsy patients with spontaneous recurrent seizures is resistant to these drugs. It is not known whether drug testing in rodent models with spontaneous recurrent seizures would yield a more predictive result with respect to AED efficacy in the clinic. This led us to test one of the novel AEDs, levetiracetam (LEV), in a rat model of temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) with spontaneous recurrent seizures.

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