碩士 / 台北醫學院 / 細胞及分子生物研究所 / 86 / Infantile spasm (IS), is a form of epilepsy specifically occurring at infant s
tage, is refractory to conventional anticonvulsant treatment but is exceptiona
lly sensitive to adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) treatment. Corticotropin-
releasing hormone (CRH), a major regulatory factor of ACTH secretion in pituit
ary, has been implicated as an important neuro-hormone participating in seizur
e generation particularly in early life of both human and animals. In human,
excessive production of CRH is speculated as one of the pathological mechanism
s underlying the generation of IS. In animal, intracerebral injection of CRH
potently produces seizure behavior since early life. Recently, cytokines also
participated in communication between immunity and central nerve system disea
ses. To further understand the role of CRH in pathological mechanisms of seiz
ure, we investigated whether increased plasma CRH level is associated with IS
and whether seizure activity will increase the expression of CRH and cytokines
(IL-1(, IL-6 and TNF-() in circulation and in brain of neonatal rats. Plasma
CRH level in IS patients (0.546(0.184 ng/ml, n=12, P<0.001) or seizure patien
ts (0.294(0.032 ng/ml, n=13, P<0.01) is significantly higher as compared to co
ntrol (0.135(0.022 ng/ml, n=12). The plasma CRH level of postnatal 30-day (P3
0) rats at 3h after kainate (KA)-injection (0.368(0.06 ng/ml, n=4) is signific
antly higher (p<0.05) than that of control, whereas, plasma CRH level show no
statistically difference in P14 rats at 1h after KA-injection (0.260(0.04 ng/m
l, n=6) when compare to that of control. Furthermore, an 7.84 and 1.55 fold i
ncreased expression of CRH mRNA in cortex was observed in P7 and P14 rats with
KA-induced seizure by RT-PCR analysis. In addition, IL-1(, IL-6 and TNF-( mR
NA expression were increased in cortex of P7 rats with KA-induced seizure. The
se data support the hypothesis that over-production of CRH is likely associate
d with IS, and seizure activity induced by KA may also upregulate the CRH and
cytokines expression in neonatal developing brain. Given that CRH is a pro-co
nvulsant in developing brain, increase of CRH in cortex elicited by seizure ma
y further potentiate the progression of the activity of seizure.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TW/086TMC00339006 |
| Date | January 1998 |
| Creators | Liu Tzu-Ling, 劉芝伶 |
| Contributors | Leu Sy-Jye, 呂思潔 |
| Source Sets | National Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations in Taiwan |
| Language | zh-TW |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | 學位論文 ; thesis |
| Format | 73 |
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