The Blood-Brain Barrier Breakdown During Acute Phase of the Pilocarpine Model of Epilepsy Is Dynamic and Time-Dependent

In conclusion, our findings indicate that BBB breakdown is a dynamic phenomenon and time-dependent, i.e., it happens at specific time-points of the acute phase of pilocarpine model of epilepsy, recovering in part its integrity afterwards (Figure 5). We show that pilocarpine-induced changes on brain tissue initially increased the permeability of the BBB to micromolecules, and subsequently, after SE, the BBB breakdown to macromolecules occurred. Although the BBB permeability to macromolecules is restored 24 h after SE, the leakage of micromolecules persists and the consequences of BBB degradation are widely disseminated in the brain, which in turn may induce further episodes of BBB breakdown. Together, our data reveal the existence of a temporal window of BBB dysfunction during the acute phase of the pilocarpine model that is important for the development of therapeutic strategies to prevent the epileptogenesis. Ethics Statement Adult male Wistar rats were obtained from the Federal University of São Paulo Experimental Models Development Center (CEDEME/Brazil). All experiments were carried out in accordance with the guidelines of the Brazilian National Council for the Control of Animal Experimentation (CONCEA) and approved by the Ethics Committee for Animal Experimentation of the Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP−01929/08). Author Contributions NM, EC, PT, JM, MO, GM, and LL carried out the experiments. AP, JC, and AdS contributed to performing...
Source: Frontiers in Neurology - Category: Neurology Source Type: research