[Current aspects of antihypertensive therapy in pregnant patients with pre-eclampsia]. / Aktuelle Aspekte in der antihypertensiven Therapie bei Schwangeren mit Präeklampsie.

Preeclampsia is a disease which occurs in Europe in about 6-8%, in the USA in about 7-10% and in Africa in about 18% of all pregnancies. A causal treatment of preeclampsia is, with the exception of delivery, not possible up to now. Since a prematurely delivery of the newborn has to be avoided because of the risks caused by immaturity of lungs, treatment and care of pregnant women having preeclampsia or any other kind of hypertensive diseases is restricted to the following approaches: antihypertensive treatment, volume expansion, and eclampsia prophylaxis with magnesium sulfate. Object of this treatment is to avoid complications on the mother's side caused by the disease and to postpone delivery, as far as possible from the child's side, in order to reduce the consequences of premature birth. During antihypertensive treatment of patients with serious hypertension, i.e. with diastolic blood pressure of 110 x mm Hg and higher, dihydralazine is in clinical use since 40 years, although many patients suffer from side-effects of dihydralazine such as distinctive tachycardia, headaches, fluid retention and nausea. With urapidil a well controllable antihypertensive is available, which prevents the effect of catecholamines at the vascular wall by a postsynaptic alpha-1 receptor blockade. Previous studies related to the application of urapidil in the treatment of hypertension during pregnancy certify the good controllability of urapidil following intravenous application as well as minor side-effects after start of treatment.

Ganglioside-induced enhancement of behavioral recovery after bilateral lesions of the entorhinal cortex.

Previous research has shown that exogenous gangliosides improve recovery of learned alternation after unilateral lesions of the entorhinal cortex. Since this recovery is thought to depend upon axonal sprouting, it has been hypothesized that ganglioside-induced improvement may be due to enhanced sprouting. The present study examined the effects of ganglioside treatments on learned alternation after bilateral entorhinal lesions. Whereas control rats exhibited a severe impairment postoperatively, ganglioside-treated (50 mg/kg total brain gangliosides; i.m.) rats committed significantly fewer errors and perseverative errors, and reached criterion sooner. The two groups exhibited comparable rates of daily improvement in performance. Since bilateral entorhinal lesions preclude the sprouting which is important for recovery of alternation, the ganglioside-induced improvement observed in the present study appears to be independent of sprouting.