Domoic acid induced seizures progress to a chronic state of epilepsy in rats

The emergence of an epilepsy syndrome in sea lions poisoned by domoic acid (DA) draws striking parallels to the single case study of temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) that developed in an 84 yr old man one year after being poisoned by DA. To establish a basis for understanding this disease in sea lions and humans that appears to progress from DA poisoning, we have investigated the potential for a single incident of DA poisoning in rats to progress to spontaneous recurrent seizures (SRS), the hallmark of epilepsy. We have developed a DA administration protocol to induce a nonlethal status epilepticus (SE) and monitored the animals for SRS by 6 h/week of video recording. We demonstrate that a single episode of SE leads to SRS in 94% of rats (n = 23) in 6 months. These findings indicate that DA induced SE can efficiently translate to epileptic disease.