Hanli Li,1,2 Zhong Dong,2 Yujing Yang,3 Qibing Sun,2 Fengqing Lu,2 Ran Li,2 Weifeng Zhou,1 Wei Gui,3 Rupan Gao,4 Yu Wang2 

1School of Clinical Medicine, Anhui Medical College, Hefei, People’s Republic of China; 2Department of Neurology, the First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, Hefei, People’s Republic of China; 3Department of Neurology, The First Affiliated Hospital of USTC, Division of Life Sciences and Medicine, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, People’s Republic of China; 4Department of Hematology, Zhongshan Hospital Fudan University, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China

Correspondence: Rupan Gao, Department of Hematology, Zhongshan Hospital Fudan University, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China, Email gao.rupan@zs-hospital.sh.cn Yu Wang, Department of Neurology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, Hefei, People’s Republic of China, Email wangyu18b@163.com

Objective: Inflammation resolution is mediated by specialized pro-resolving lipid mediators (SPMs). It’s of high interest to understand the alterations of SPMs in chronic epilepsy.
Methods: Sixty-five patients with chronic epilepsy, 43 healthy controls and 43 patients with non-inflammatory neurological disorders were enrolled in this study. Plasma and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) levels of SPMs were measured using liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS-MS). Moreover, Resolvin D1 (RvD1) and resolvin E1 (RvE1), as well as pro-inflammatory factors were analyzed by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA).
Results: LC-MS-MS found several lipid mediators were altered, especially plasma (P = 0.014) and CSF (P = 0.010) RvE1 levels were decreased in patients with chronic epilepsy. Furthermore, ELISA results showed that in plasma and CSF, RvD1 and RvE1 levels were both lower in patients with chronic epilepsy, while pro-inflammatory factors were higher than in controls. Moreover, plasma RvE1 level was independently negatively associated with the National Hospital Seizure Severity Scale scores (&Bgr; = − 0.00636, P < 0.001). While plasma RvD1 level was correlated with Mini-Mental State Examination scores (R = 0.284, P = 0.022).
Conclusion: This study demonstrated decreased levels of RvD1 and RvE1 both in plasma and CSF in patients with chronic epilepsy, suggesting impaired resolution of inflammation in chronic epilepsy. Targeting RvD1 and RvE1 may be a novel direction worthy of further research in the treatment of chronic epilepsy.

Keywords: chronic epilepsy, inflammation, specialized pro-resolving lipid mediators, resolvin D1, resolvin E1