2001 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

Expression of Glutamate and GABA Receptors in Brain Specimens from Intractable Pediatric Epilepsy.

Research Project

Project/Area Number	11670167
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Section	一般
Research Field	Human pathology
Research Institution	Dokkyo University School of Medicine
Principal Investigator	YAMANOUCHI Hideo Dokkyo University School of Medicine, PEDIATRICS, Lecturer, 医学部, 講師 (10250226)
Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha)	EGUCHI Mitsuoki Dokkyo University School of Medicine, PEDIATRICS, Professor, 医学部, 教授 (60020799)
Project Period (FY)	1999 – 2001
Keywords	epilepsy / developmental disturbance / cortical dysplasia / glutamate receptors / NMDA receptors
Research Abstract	To explore the role of glutamate receptors in cortical dysplasia, we examined gene expression of NMDAR1 receptor in surgical specimens from fifteen pediatric patients with intractable epilepsy, which were pathologically diagnosed as cortical dysplasia. Histopathologically, thirteen cases were judged as grade 2 and two cases were as grade 3. In situ hybridization with NMDAR1 non-radioactive antisense riboprobe showed increased signal in large dysplastic neurons, less intensely in the nearly-normal sized neurons in dysplastic cortex, but only faint in neurons in normal appearing cortex. These results suggest that the expression of NMDAR1 receptor gene is enhanced in cortical dysplasia, speculating that excitatory condition may be related with abnormal expression of NMDAR1 receptors in cortical dysplasia.