Neuropharmacology Poster Session

Re: Poster 693

On Sun Dec 6, grover wrote
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>Dr. Churchill: Hope you are enjoying the meeting. Great poster. Your assertion was that chronic treatment with antiepileptic medications may produce adverse cognitive effects. However, the coclusions drawn here are from normal rats. Would you anticipate the same results if the rats had seizures?
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Dr. Grover,
We view the fact that the rats used in this study were "normal" (at least as normal as an albino, lab rat can be) as incidental. We are specifically evaluating the effects of these in the absence of such confounds as a seizure. The fact is that antiepileptic compounds are used to treat a number of disorders, not all being seizure-related and that even when epilepsy is the disorder targeted, seizure frequency is not overly prevelant in many cases. Moreover, an abundance of seizure-models exist that don't necessarily mimic the disorder observed in humans and the mere presence of seizures has been shown to be related to cognitive deficits. Finally, regardless of the seizure model used, it seems reasonable to assume that these drugs would produce comparable effects to those observed in "normal" rats.

Wed Dec 9