Trio-Drug Combination of Sodium Valproate, Baclofen and Thymoquinone Exhibits Synergistic Anticonvulsant Effects in Rats and Neuro-Protective Effects in HEK-293 Cells

Epilepsy is a chronic brain disorder, with anti-epileptic drugs (AEDs) providing relief from hyper-excitability of neurons, but largely failing to restrain neurodegeneration. We investigated a progressive preclinical trial in rats, whereby the test drugs; sodium valproate (SVP; 150 and 300 mg/kg), baclofen (BFN; 5 and 10 mg/kg), and thymoquinone (THQ; 40 and 80 mg/kg) were administered (i.p, once/day for 15 days) alone, and as low dose combinations, and subsequently tested for antiseizure and neuroprotective potential using electrical stimulation of neurons by Maximal electroshock (MES). The seizure stages were monitored, and hippocampal levels of m-TOR, IL-1β, IL-6 were measured. Hippocampal histopathology was also performed. Invitro and Insilco studies were run to counter-confirm the results from rodent studies. We report the synergistic effect of trio-drug combination; SVP (150 mg/kg), BFN (5 mg/kg) and THQ (40 mg/kg) against generalized seizures. The Insilco results revealed that trio-drug combination binds the Akt active site as a supramolecular complex, which could have served as a delivery system that affects the penetration and the binding to the new target. The potential energy of the ternary complex in the Akt active site after dynamics simulation was found to be -370.426 Kcal/mol, while the supramolecular ternary complex alone was -38.732 Kcal/mol, with a potential energy difference of -331.694 Kcal/mol, which favors the supramolecular ternary complex at Akt active site binding. In addition, the said combination increased cell viability by 267% and reduced morphological changes induced by Pentylenetetrazol (PTZ) in HEK-293 cells, which indicates the neuroprotective property of said combination. To conclude, we are the first to report the anti-convulsant and neuroprotective potential of the trio-drug combination.