Emmanuel Tom
According In addition to the recurrent seizures, epilepsy is also associated with post-seizure impairment in cognitive and visuo-spartial memory function. Pentylenetetrazole (PTZ) kindling is a well-established animal model in simulation of clinical epilepsy. This present study was designed to comparatively assess the effects of diazepam (DZP) and ethanol leaf-extract of Dichrostachys glomerata (DG) on learning and memory in pentylenetetrazol induced epileptic mice. Twenty eight male Swiss white mice were randomly grouped into four (n=7). Group 1 served as control and was given 0.9% normal saline (IP). Group 2 served as untreated epileptic control group and was administered(IP) 60mg/kg of pentylenetetrazol (PTZ) while the other two groups (3 and 4) served as epileptic mice groups treated with DZP (1mg/kg) and DG (4.5mg/kg) respectively prior to induction of epilepsy. The anti-epileptic effects of both agents on cognitive and visuo-spatial memory status on the animals were assessed using the Novel object recognition task (NORT) and the Morris water maze (MWM) respectively.
