ABSTRACT
<p><b>BACKGROUND</b>Glucocorticoid receptor (GR) is believed to be a major factor in brain maturation and in modulation of a series of brain activity. Hippocampal neurons are abundant in glucocorticoid receptor, and there is significant change in GR expression under certain pathological state. Epilepsy is a special pathological state of the central nervous system. This study aimed to explore the role of GR in epilepsy by observing the change and functions of GR in hippocampus with a basolateral amygdale-electrical kindled rat epilepsy model.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>Firstly, we established the basolateral amygdale-electrical kindled rat epilepsy model. Then GR mRNA expression in the hippocampus was assayed by semi-quantitative reverse transcription-PCR in this experiment. In addition, the processes of epileptic seizures were observed and electroencephalograms were recorded. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was employed for comparing means of multiple groups, followed Fisher's least significant difference (LSD) for paired comparison.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>The rats were successfully kindled after an average of (13.50 ± 3.99) times electrical stimulation, in which it was showed that GR mRNA expression reduced obviously as compared with the control group and the sham groups (P < 0.001). The down-regulation of GR mRNA expression was abated or reversed by some anti-epilepsy drugs (P < 0.001 compared with the epilepsy group), accompanied by attenuation of seizures and improvement of electroencephalograms.</p><p><b>CONCLUSIONS</b>Down-regulation of hippocampal GR mRNA expression may be related to the kindling. Anti-epilepsy drugs exposure can retard this change.</p>