[Proton nuclear magnetic resonance in the pharmacologic study of cerebral edema]

Wistar male rats have been orally administered 2 mg X kg-1j-1 of triethyltin (TET) chloride for 5 consecutive days. The result was a cerebral edema which constituted a reproducible and useful experimental model for pharmacological screening of drugs used in ageing. Water content modifications and clinical behaviour for 11 days from the beginning of experiment have been linked to T1 and T2 proton relaxation times measured by nuclear magnetic resonance (1H-NMR). The observation of 3 central nervous system structures, which differ in white matter content, has lead to the conclusion that NMR is a more sensitive technique to follow up the edema evolution than the water content measurement alone; it has also allowed to discriminate intra from extra-cellular edema (osmotic and TET edema), and has proved the action of two drugs which are used in aging process treatment on the TET edema (dihydroergotoxine 2 X 10 mg X kg-1j-1 and (--) eburnamonine 2 X 50 mg X kg-1j-1). In the future the mastery of this technology will be used to study other nuclei (Na, K, P) which will bring more physiopathological informations and to pharmacological investigations of the brain by NMR tomography or focalised NMR.