Daphne, Santhosh and Bairy, Indira (2014) Effect of cellular neuronal insult on Self-Repair and regeneration in the hippocampus of wistar rats during acute pneumococcal meningitis. International Journal of Medicine and Medical Sciences, 47 (2). pp. 1547-1553. ISSN 2051-5731

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Abstract

Aims: The aim was to investigate the response of the hippocampus in self-repair and regeneration of neurons in response to infection and inflammation during the acute phase of pneumococcal meningitis. Study design: The study was designed to see the effects of physiological and pathological sequence of events that precipitate and culminate in neuronal cell damage during infectious disease process in the brain caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae and thereby the response of the hippocampal neurons in self-repair. Methodology: The experiments were conducted on 30 days old Wistar rats (n=12) and were divided into two batches of 6 each. One batch for normal saline control group; the second batch for untreated meningitis group. BrdU was injected in both groups for four days. Pneumococcal meningitis was induced in the rats by intracisternal inoculation of pneumococcal suspension, 1x106CFU/ml. Brain sections were taken and histological quantification was done by cresyl violet staining and immunohistochemistry was done using BrdU to detect newly born cells in the hippocampus especially concentrating in the dentate gyrus region. DNA damage studies were done using Single cell gel electrophoresis (SCG) or Comet assay. Results: Histomorphological quantification revealed 60% (281.5 ± 27.75; n=6; Vs 113.00 ± 2.01; n=6; ***P<0.0001; Statistical analysis: two-tailed student‟s-t test) damage in the dentate gyrus region of the hippocampus in the meningitis rat brain while BrdU immunostaining showed about 28% increase in the birth of newly dividing cells in the dentate gyrus when compared to the normal (31.50 ± 2.045; n=6; Vs 42.00 ± 0.8944; n=6; ***P value < 0.0001; Statistical analysis: student‟s-t test). SCG analysis showed no DNA damage (2.204 ± 0.2262 n=6 Vs 2.904 ± 0.2413 n=6; *P value ≤ 0.0354 Statistical analysis: student‟s-t test). Conclusion: Our study reveals that during infection and inflammation, the hippocampus shows self-repair which gives much scope for therapeautic intervention during the acute phase of the disease before complications set in.

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