Antioxidants as a preventive treatment for epileptic process: a review of the current status.

Epilepsy is known as one of the most frequent neurological diseases, characterized by an enduring predisposition to generate epileptic seizures. Oxidative stress is believed to directly participate in pathways leading to neurodegeneration, which serves as the most important propagating factor, leading to the epileptic condition and cognitive decline. Moreover, there is also a growing body of evidence showing the disturbance of antioxidant system balance and consequently increased production of reactive species in patients with epilepsy. A meta-analysis, conducted in the present review confirms an association between epilepsy and increased lipid peroxidation. Furthermore, it was also shown that some of the antiepileptic drugs could potentially be responsible for additionally increased lipid peroxidation. Therefore, it is reasonable to propose that during the epileptic process neuroprotective treatment with antioxidants could lead to less sever structural damages, reduced epileptogenesis and milder cognitive deterioration. To evaluate this hypothesis studies investigating the neuroprotective therapeutic potential of various antioxidants in cells, animal seizure models and patients with epilepsy have been reviewed. Numerous beneficial effects of antioxidants on oxidative stress markers and in some cases also neuroprotective effects were observed in animal seizure models. However, despite these encouraging results, till now only a few antioxidants have been further applied to patients with epilepsy as an add-on therapy. Based on the several positive findings in animal models, a strong need for more carefully planned, randomized, double-blind, cross-over, placebo-controlled clinical trials for the evaluation of antioxidants efficacy in patients with epilepsy is warranted.

A simple high-throughput method for determination of antiepileptic analogues of γ-aminobutyric acid in pharmaceutical dosage forms using microplate fluorescence reader.

Pregabalin (PGB), gabapentin (GBP), and vigabatrin (VGB) are structural analogues of γ-aminobutyric acid used for the treatment of different forms of epilepsy. Their analytical determination is challenging since these molecules have no significant UV or visible absorption. Several derivatization methods have been developed and used for their determination in bulk or pharmaceutical dosage forms. We aimed to develop a high- throughput method using a microplate reader with fluorescence detection and simple derivatization with fluorescamine. Obtained method involves derivatization step of only 5 min at room temperature and simultaneous measurements of 96 samples (λex 395, λem 476 nm) thus rendering excellent high-throughput analysis. The method was found to be linear with r²>0.998 across investigated analytical ranges of 0.75 to 30.0 µg/mL for PGB, 2.00 to 80.0 µg/mL for GBP, and 1.50 to 60.0 µg/mL for VGB. Intraday and interday precision values did not exceed 4.93%. The accuracy was ranging between 96.6 to 103.5%. The method was also found to be specific since used excipients did not interfere with the method. The robustness study showed that derivatization procedure is more robust than spectrofluorimetric conditions. The developed high-throughput method was successfully applied for determination of drug content and dissolution profiles in pharmaceutical dosage forms of studied antiepileptic drugs.

The role of reactive species in epileptogenesis and influence of antiepileptic drug therapy on oxidative stress.

Epilepsy is considered one of the most common neurological disorders. The focus of this review is the acquired form of epilepsy, with the development process consisting of three major phases, the acute injury phase, the latency epileptogenesis phase, and the phase of spontaneous recurrent seizures. Nowadays, an increasing attention is paid to the possible interrelationship between oxidative stress resulting in disturbance of physiological signalling roles of calcium and free radicals in neuronal cells and mitochondrial dysfunction, cell damage, and epilepsy. The positive stimulation of mitochondrial calcium signals by reactive oxygen species and increased reactive oxygen species generation resulting from increased mitochondrial calcium can lead to a positive feedback loop. We propose that calcium can pose both, physiological and pathological effects of mitochondrial function, which can lead in neuronal cell death and consequent epileptic seizures. Various antiepileptic drugs may impair the endogenous antioxidative ability to prevent oxidative stress. Therefore, some antiepileptic drugs, especially from the older generation, may trigger oxygen-dependent tissue injury. The prooxidative effects of these antiepileptic drugs might lead to enhancement of seizure activity, resulting in loss of their efficacy or apparent functional tolerance and undesired adverse effects. Additionally, various reactive metabolites of antiepileptic drugs are capable of covalent binding to macromolecules which may lead to deterioration of the epileptic seizures and systemic toxicity. Since neuronal loss seems to be one of the major neurobiological abnormalities in the epileptic brain, the ability of antioxidants to attenuate seizure generation and the accompanying changes in oxidative burden, further support an important role of antioxidants as having a putative antiepileptic potential.

Rapid high-performance liquid chromatography method for determination of pregabalin in a pharmaceutical dosage form following derivatization with fluorescamine.

A simple, fast, and sensitive HPLC method was developed and validated for the evaluation of pregabalin in a pharmaceutical dosage form using fluorescamine as a derivatization agent for the first time. After a precolumn derivatization (5 min, room temperature), the reaction mixture was chromatographed on a C18 column with isocratic elution using 0.2% of triethylamine in a mixture of methanol and water (10 + 90, v/v). 3-Aminopentanoic acid was used as the internal standard. Using fluorescent detection (lamdaex 395 nm, lamdaem 476 nm), a low detection limit of 0.02 microg/mL was reached. The method was linear (r > 0.999) over the lower (0.125-25 microg/mL) and higher (1.25-250 microg/mL) concentration range. The intraday and interday precision of the QC samples was < 4.3%, and the accuracy was 94.2-102.5%. The samples were stable for 24 h at 4 degrees C. The robustness study showed that the derivatization is more robust than the chromatography method. The method was applied for the analysis of pregabalin content in 25, 75, and 300 mg capsules, and a good agreement was found with the declared amount of pregabalin (the relative error did not exceed 3.2%). Finally, the method was successfully used for dissolution studies of pregabalin capsules.

Simultaneous determination of gabapentin, pregabalin, vigabatrin, and topiramate in plasma by HPLC with fluorescence detection.

Therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) of antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) has been recognized as a useful tool in management of epilepsy. We developed a simple analytical method for simultaneous determination of four second generation AEDs, including gabapentin (GBP), pregabalin (PGB), vigabatrin (VGB), and topiramate (TOP). Analytes were extracted from human plasma using universal solid phase extraction, derivatized with 4-chloro-7-nitrobenzofurazan (NBD-Cl) and analyzed by HPLC with fluorescence detection. Using mass spectrometry we confirmed that NBD-Cl reacts with sulfamate group of TOP similarly as with amine group of the other three analytes. The method is linear (r(2)>0.998) across investigated analytical ranges (0.375-30.0µg/mL for GBP, PGB, and VGB; 0.50-20.0µg/mL for TOP). Intraday and interday precision do not exceed 9.40%. The accuracy is from 95.6% to 106%. The recovery is higher than 80.6%, and the lower limit of quantification is at least 0.5µg/mL. The method is selective and robust. For TOP determination the method was compared to a previously published method and the results obtained by the two methods were in good agreement. The developed method is suitable for routine TDM.