Silibinin Inhibits Inflammation And Apoptosis In A Rat Model Of Temporal Lobe Epilepsy

Inflammation and apoptosis in the hippocampus are closely related to temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). Silibinin has shown significant anti-inflammatory and anti-apoptotic effects in other diseases including hepatitis, cerebral ischemia, and neuroinflammatory disease. However, the biological effects of silibinin in brain during epilepsy remain unclear. Our study aimed to investigate the protective effects of silibinin in rats after status epilepticus (SE) and its potential mechanisms of protection. Silibinin was intragastrically administered to rats 30 minutes before induction of SE and the animals were then given a gavage of silibinin daily before sacrificing. Our data showed that silibinin inhibited overexpression of tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha), interleukin-1 beta (IL-1 beta), interleukin-6 (IL-6), caspase-3, cleaved caspase-3, and hypoxia inducible factor-1 alpha (HIF-1 alpha) in the hippocampus at both 24 hours and 72 hours after SE induction. In addition, silibinin significantly reduced apoptotic cell death and neuronal loss in the CA1 region of the hippocampus. Overall, our study shows that silibinin has anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective effects during epileptogenesis and we conclude that its effects may result from the inhibition of HIF-1 alpha signaling.