Li Fei Ran, Lévesque Maxime, Wang Siyan, Carreño-Muñoz Maria-Isabel, Di Cristo Graziella, Avoli Massimo
Montreal Neurological Institute-Hospital and Departments of Neurology & Neurosurgery, Montréal, Québec, H3A 2B4, Canada.
Physiology, McGill University, 3801 University Street, Montréal, Québec H3A 2B4, Canada.
Curr Res Neurobiol. 2024 May 11;6:100131. doi: 10.1016/j.crneur.2024.100131. eCollection 2024.
Catamenial epilepsy, defined as a periodicity of seizure exacerbation during the menstrual cycle, affects up to 70 % of epileptic women. Seizures in these patients are often non-responsive to medication; however, our understanding of the relation between menstrual cycle and seizure generation (i.e. ictogenesis) remains limited. We employed here field potential recordings in the 4-aminopyridine model of epileptiform synchronization in female mice (P60-P130) and found that: (i) the estrous phase favors ictal activity in the entorhinal cortex; (ii) these ictal discharges display an onset pattern characterised by the presence of chirps that are thought to mirror synchronous interneuron firing; and (iii) blocking estrogen receptor β-mediated signaling reduces ictal discharge duration. Our findings indicate that the duration of 4AP-induced ictal discharges, , increases during the estrous phase, which corresponds to the human peri-ovulatory period. We propose that these effects are caused by the presumptive enhancement of interneuron excitability due to increased estrogen receptor β-mediated signaling.
月经性癫痫被定义为月经周期中癫痫发作加剧的周期性现象，影响着高达70%的癫痫女性患者。这些患者的癫痫发作通常对药物治疗无反应；然而，我们对月经周期与癫痫发作产生（即发作起源）之间关系的理解仍然有限。我们在此采用了雌性小鼠（P60 - P130）癫痫样同步化的4 - 氨基吡啶模型进行场电位记录，发现：（i）发情期有利于内嗅皮质的发作活动；（ii）这些发作性放电呈现出一种起始模式，其特征是存在被认为反映同步中间神经元放电的啁啾声；（iii）阻断雌激素受体β介导的信号传导可减少发作性放电的持续时间。我们的研究结果表明，4 - 氨基吡啶诱导的发作性放电的持续时间，，在发情期增加，这与人类的排卵期相对应。我们提出，这些效应是由于雌激素受体β介导的信号传导增加导致中间神经元兴奋性推测性增强所引起的。
