Untargeted lipidomic analysis of human hippocampus for temporal lobe epilepsy with hippocampal sclerosis

Mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (mTLE), a very common chronic neurological disorder, is frequently accompanied by neurodegeneration in the hippocampus, resulting in hippocampal sclerosis (HS); HS is the most common morphological correlate of drug resistance in mTLE patients. Incomplete knowledge of pathological changes in mTLE with HS complicates its therapy. Growing evidence indicates a role of lipid signaling pathways in epileptogenesis; thus, lipid signals emerge as potential biomarkers for the onset and evolving course of this epileptic disorder, and are potential therapeutic agents and targets. Therefore, in this study, we recruited 23 patients with medically intractable mTLE-HS and 24 non-mTLE-HS controls. We applied lipidomic analysis to identify the lipidomic profiles in the hippocampal samples of both groups. The lipidomic profiles of the hippocampus were distinctive between mTLE-HS patients and controls. We also observed that the abundance of total triglycerides showed a striking reduction in the hippocampus of mTLE-HS patients. We identified that 33 lipids were significantly differentially expressed in the hippocampus of mTLE-HS patients compared with those in the hippocampus of the controls; this might contribute to target some molecular mechanisms involved in epileptogenesis. The present study therefore reports that lipidomic changes in mTLE-HS patients may contribute to the molecular architecture of an epileptic brain.