Abstract

The effect of curcumin had been studied on anxiety and recognition memory in kainic acid-induced epilepsy. A single dose of intraperitoneal kainic acid (10 mg/kg) was used to induce status epilepticus in female Wistar rats, followed by respective treatments (vehicle dimethyl sulfoxide 50%, curcumin 100 mg/kg/d or levetiracetam 100 mg/kg/d) on the next day for 7 d, with minimum of six rats per group. The behavioural tests were performed before seizure induction and after treatment. Vehicle-treated epileptic rats showed an increase in anxiety-like behaviours in the open field test, which less observed in the light/dark box test. Levetiracetam-treated epileptic rats exhibited anxiolytic behaviours in both the tests. Curcumin-treated epileptic rats exhibited not much difference in anxiety-like behaviour before and after the treatment in open field test, but exhibited anxiolytic behaviours in light/dark box test. Kainic acid impaired the both spatial and non-spatial recognition memories of the rats. Curcumin treatment showed reversal in the non-spatial recognition impaired by kainic acid. In conclusion, kainic acid increases anxiety-like behaviours and impaired recognition memories during the early phase of epileptogenesis and curcumin was potentially improved anxiety and non-spatial recognition memory impaired by kainic acid. These benefits highlighted the potential effect of curcumin to improve psychiatric disorders in epilepsy.