HT-project: Expression profiling after prolonged experimental febrile seizures suggests structural remodeling in the hippocampus

Febrile seizures are the most prevalent type of seizures among children up to 5 years of age (2-4% of Western-European children). Complex febrile seizures are associated with an increased risk to develop temporal lobe epilepsy. To investigate short- and long-term effects of experimental febrile seizures (eFS), we induced eFS in highly febrile convulsion-susceptible C57BL/6J mice at post-natal day 10 by exposure to hyperthermia (HT) and compared them to normotherm-exposed (NT) mice. We detected structural re-organization in the hippocampus 14 days after eFS. To identify molecular candidates, which entrain this structural re-organization, we investigated temporal changes in mRNA expression profiles eFS 1 hour to 56 days after eFS. We identified 931 regulated genes and profiled several candidates using in situ hybridization and histology at 3 and 14 days after eFS. This is the first study to report genome-wide transcriptome analysis after eFS in mice. We identify temporal regulation of multiple processes, such as stress-, immune- and inflammatory responses, glia activation, glutamate-glutamine cycle and myelination. Identification of the short- and long-term changes after eFS is important to elucidate the mechanisms contributing to epileptogenesis. Acute, short-, and long-term effects of prolonged febrile seizures on gene expression were investigated in whole hippocampal samples. Samples were taken from C57BL/6J animals one hour (HT n = 8, NT n = 8), three days (HT n = 6, NT n = 6), fourteen days (HT n = 6, NT n = 6), and fifty-six days (HT n = 6, NT n = 6) after HT. Two-channel oligonucleotide microarray analysis was performed with an NT and HT sample on the same chip, including a dye-swap (technical replicate). 3 failed hybridizations were omitted from further analysis.