Anticonvulsion effect of acupuncture might be related to the decrease of neuronal and inducible nitric oxide synthases

To measure the levels of hippocampal nitric oxide synthase isoforms in peni cillin induced epilepsy and to test the effect of electroacupuncture (EA) o n changes of these levels during epilepsy we injected penicillin into rat h ippocampus to make an epilepsy model and performed electroacupuncture treat ment on "Feng Fu" (DU 16) and "Jin Suo" (DU 8) points in Wistar rats. Nitri c oxide synthase (NOS) mRNA levels of rat hippocampus were determined by re verse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). The neuronal nitric oxide synthase (nNOS) mRNA markedly increased (p<0.01) and inducible nitri c oxide synthase (iNOS) mRNA significantly emerged during epilepsy, whereas no significant change in epithelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) mRNA was observed. EA inhibited the epilepsy and decreased nNOS (p<0.01) and iNOS (p <0.01) correspondingly but had no effect on the amount of eNOS mRNA. The da ta suggest that penicillin-induced epilepsy caused an increase in nNOS and iNOS, and the EA anticonvulsant effect might be related to the decrease of these nitric oxide synthases.