[Morphometric study on the cerebral cortex of partial status epilepticus rats induced by coriaria lactone]

Twenty adult male Wistar rats, divided into two groups were studied. Experimental rats were embedded with a particle containing Coriaria Lactone into the fore limb's representative area of cerebral motor cortex to induce epilepsy. Control rats were embedded with a particle containing distilled water. After 6 h motor cortex was cut and the structure was compared morphologically with control rats. Some pale neurons, dark shrunken neurons and severe sponginess of neuropil were observed in layers I-V of the epileptic rat under LM. Under EM, the mitochondria became swollen and other organelles migrated and close associated with the nucleus in pale neurons, and in dark neurons both cytoplasm and karyoplasm showed highly electron dense. The spongiform neuropil was mainly occupied by swollen glial processes. The number of neuron and neuroglia were counted from photos under LM. The number of synaptic terminal was counted directly and the areal fraction of the constituents in the neuropil was measured stereologically in the EM photos. The number of neuron and neueroglia decreased significantly. Both the number of synaptic terminal in neuropil and the areal fraction of synaptic terminal decreased significantly. These changes were most prominent in the focus area of epileptic rats and in the parafocus area, too. This may indicate that the decrease of areal fraction of synaptic terminal results from the decrease of the number of synaptic terminal.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)