[Benefits and indications of xenon anaesthesia]

Xenon inhalation attenuates neuronal injury and prevents epilepsy in febrile seizure Sprague-Dawley pups

Background

Febrile seizures (FS) usually occur in childhood and may cause irreversible neuronal damage, cognitive functional defects, and an increase in the risk of epilepsy later in life. Anti-epileptic drugs (AEDs), currently used to treat FS in children, can relieve seizures. However, their effects in preventing the risk of developing epilepsy in later life are unsatisfactory. Moreover, AEDs may damage child brain development. Here, we evaluated the efficiency of xenon in treating prolonged FS (PFS) and preventing epilepsy in Sprague-Dawley pups.

Methods

Prolonged FS was induced by hyperthermic treatment. After 90 min of PFS, the pups in the xenon treatment group were immediately treated with 70% xenon/21% oxygen/9% nitrogen for 60 min. The levels of glutamate, mitochondrial oxidative stress, mitophagy, and neuronal injury, seizures, learning, and memory functions were measured at specific time points.

Results

Neonatal period PFS led to spontaneous seizure, learning and memory dysfunction, accompanied by increased levels of glutamate, mitochondrial oxidative stress, mitophagy, and neuronal injury. Xenon treatment alleviated the changes caused by PFS and reduced the risk of PFS developing into epilepsy later.

Conclusion

Our results suggest that xenon inhalation could be a potential therapeutic strategy to attenuate neuronal injury and prevent epilepsy in patients with FS.

Xenon-Protein Interactions: Characterization by X-Ray Crystallography and Hyper-CEST NMR

The physiological activity of xenon has long been recognized, though the exact nature of its interactions with biomolecules remains poorly understood. Xe is an inert noble gas, but can act as a general anesthetic, most likely by binding internal hydrophobic cavities within proteins. Understanding Xe-protein interactions, therefore, can provide crucial insight regarding the mechanism of Xe anesthesia and potentially other general anesthetic agents. Historically, Xe-protein interactions have been studied primarily through X-ray crystallography and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). In this chapter, we first describe our methods for preparing Xe derivatives of protein crystals and identifying Xe-binding sites. Second, we detail our procedure for ¹²⁹Xe hyper-CEST NMR spectroscopy, a versatile NMR technique well suited for characterizing the weak, transient nature of Xe-protein interactions.

129Xe NMR-based sensors: biological applications and recent methods

Molecular systems that target analytes of interest and host spin-hyperpolarized xenon lead to powerful ¹²⁹Xe NMR-based sensors.