Expression of cortex clusterin and intervention effect of ketogenic diet on neonatal rats with recurrent seizures

Objective To investigate dynamic expressions of cortex clusterin (CLU) and intervention effect of ketogenic diet (KD) on neonatal rats with recurrent seizures. Methods Thirty-six-8-day postnatal SD rats were randomly divided into 3 groups: normal control group(NS+ ND group, n=12), and the recurrent-seizure and normal diet group(RS+ ND group, n=12), and the recurrent-seizure and KD group(RS+ KD group, n=12). From 9 d, rats in RS+ ND group and RS+ KD group were subjected to recurrent seizures induced by volatile flurothyl 30 min each day for consecutive 8 days.Rats in NS+ ND group were placed into the container for an equal amount of time to their counterpart without exposure to flurothyl.Scores on neurological behaviors at 35 days postnatally were examined.CLU protein levels in cerebral cortex were determined by Western blot at 58 days postnatally. Results Neurodevelopmental indicators analysis: in the plane righting experiment, there were significant differences between NS+ ND group[(1.03±0.54) s], RS+ KD group[(0.89±0.16) s] and RS+ ND group [(0.64±0.30) s] about the time of plane righting (all P<0.05); in the negative geotaxis reaction experiment, the rats of NS+ ND group [(1.92±0.90) s], and RS+ KD group [(5.17±0.72) s] about the time of negative geotaxis reaction were significantly different compared with RS+ ND group[(7.33±0.65) s] (all P<0.01). In the cliff avoidance test, there were significant differences between NS+ ND group, RS+ KD group [(4.33±2.54) s, (8.75±2.26) s] and RS+ ND group [(16.58±4.25) s] about the time of cliff avoidance (all P<0.01). Western blot showed that the expression of CLU in cerebral cortex of the RS+ ND group [(2.24±0.53) s] was obviously increased compared with NS+ ND group [(1.44±0.11) s] (P<0.01), and there also had significant difference between RS+ KD group [(1.56±0.24) s] and RS+ ND group (P<0.05). Conclusions It shows that the up-regulated expression of CLU in cerebral cortex may be associated with recurrent neonatal seizure-induced brain damage, while KD may protect them from recurrent neonatal seizure-induced brain damage by down-regulating expression of CLU. Key words: Seizure; Neonatal rat; Clusterin; Ketogenic diet