European Journal of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences

INTERFERENCE OF PENTYLENETETRAZOL-KINDLED INTERMITTENT EPILEPSY ON RATS’ COGNITIVE FUNCTIONS

Ebeku A.C., *Olorunfemi O.J. and Okoseimiema S.C.

ABSTRACT

Cognitive and behavioural deficits are often associated with epilepsy and greatly reduce patients' quality of life. It is unclear whether or not intermittent epilepsy (marked by recurrent seizures) independent of its aetiology can cause or worsen these deficits in cognition, creating a need to better understand the relationship between epilepsy and its related cognitive and behavioural impairments. Hence the reason for the present efforts to contribute to the said gap in knowledge as this study is structured to study the interference of intermittent epilepsy on cognitive function in experimental animal model. This study provides experimental evidence on the interference of intermittent epilepsy on rats' cognitive function using PTZ-kindling model of epilepsy. Twenty (20) healthy Wistar rats weighting between 80-100g were used for this study. The rats were shared into four (4) groups with five rats in each group; groups 1 served as control did not receive any treatment, group 2, 3 and 4 received subconvulsive doses (35mg/kg) of Pentylenetetrazol. Thereafter cognitive assessment using the passive avoidance, Morris water maze, beam walking, inverted screen, elevated plus maze Barnes maze and handgrip tests were carried out for a period of three weeks. The results of the study showed that intermittent epilepsy significantly impaired rats’ learning, short and long term memory as well as spatial reference memory in rats. Furthermore, these impairments worsened as seizure scores, measured the Racine scale, increased. It was therefore concluded that recurrent seizures are major contributors to the cognitive comorbidities observed in epilepsy.

Keywords: Epilepsy,pentylenetetrazol kindling, cognitive function.