Anxious Profile Influences Behavioral and Immunohistological Findings in the Pilocarpine Model of Epilepsy.

Anxiety and epilepsy have a complex bidirectional relationship, where a depressive/anxious condition is a factor that can trigger seizures which in turn can aggravate the depressive/anxious condition. In addition, brain structures such as the hippocampus and amygdala might have a critical relevance in both epilepsy and anxiety. The aim of the present work was to investigate the influence of different anxious profiles to epileptogenesis.

Anticonvulsant activity of bone marrow cells in electroconvulsive seizures in mice.

Background: Bone marrow is an accessible source of progenitor cells, which have been investigated as treatment for neurological diseases in a number of clinical trials. Here we evaluated the potential benefit of bone marrow cells in protecting against convulsive seizures induced by maximum electroconvulsive shock (MES), a widely used model for screening of anti-epileptic drugs. Behavioral and inflammatory responses were measured after MES induction in order to verify the effects promoted by transplantation of bone marrow cells.

Distribution and proliferation of bone marrow cells in the brain after pilocarpine-induced status epilepticus in mice.

The distribution of bone marrow cells in brain areas during the acute period after pilocarpine-induced status epiepticus (SE) was investigated here. To achieve this, we generated chimeric mice by engrafting bone marrow cells from enhanced green fluorescent protein (eGFP) transgenic mice. GFP(+) bone marrow-derived cells were found throughout the brain, predominantly in the hippocampus.

Assessment of seizure susceptibility in pilocarpine epileptic and nonepileptic Wistar rats and of seizure reinduction with pentylenetetrazole and electroshock models.

Purpose: Pentylenetetrazole (PTZ) and maximal electroshock (MES) models are often used to induce seizures in nonepileptic control animals or naive animals. Despite being widely used to screen antiepileptic drugs (AEDs), both models have so far failed to detect potentially useful AEDs for treating drug-resistant epilepsies. Here we investigated whether the acute induction of MES and PTZ seizures in epileptic rats might yield a distinct screening profile for AEDs.

Staying at the crossroads: assessment of the potential of serum lithium monitoring in predicting an ideal lithium dose.

Objective: Lithium has been successfully employed to treat bipolar disorder for decades, and recently, was shown to attenuate the symptoms of other pathologies such as Alzheimer's disease, Down's syndrome, ischemic processes, and glutamate-mediated excitotoxicity. However, lithium's narrow therapeutic range limits its broader use. Therefore, the development of methods to better predict its dose becomes essential to an ideal therapy.

Cognitive enhancement in aged rats after chronic administration of Equisetum arvense L. with demonstrated antioxidant properties in vitro.

The aim of this work was to verify if chronic administration of the hydroalcoholic extract of stems from Equisetum arvense (HAE) reverses the cognitive impairment in aged rats, as well as, evaluates it in vitro antioxidant properties. Chronic administration of HAE at dose of 50 mg/kg, i.p.