Decreased Seizure Threshold in an Eclampsia-Like Model Induced in Pregnant Rats with Lipopolysaccharide and Pentylenetetrazol Treatments

Eclampsia is a poorly understood but potentially fatal complication of pregnancy. Research to date on this disorder has been hampered by the lack of a suitable animal model. To correct this deficiency, this report describes the generation of a rat eclampsia-like model using pentylenetetrazol (PTZ) in a previously established rat preeclampsia model. (270 mg/kg IP) was injected in advance of PTZ into PE rats to observe its effect on PTZ-induced seizures. administration.This PTZ-induced eclampsia-like rat model is comparable to the human condition of eclampsia and may serve as a useful research tool for future studies of this disease. The increased inflammatory cytokines in preeclampsia are coincident with a decreased threshold for PTZ-induced seizures, suggesting that an inflammatory mechanism may contribute to the susceptibility to seizure activity and inflammation might have an important role in eclampsia