Comparing Anticonvulsive Effect of Melissa Officinalis` Hydro-Alcoholic Extract and Phenytoin in Rat

Background: Epilepsy originates from brain function disorders that might appear in the forms of overt disorders or fainting (losing consciousness), abnormal motional activities, behavioral abnormalities and sensational impairment and/or disorders in autonomic performance; all these symptoms are observable in early sleeping stages.
Objectives: Epilepsy is one of the most common neural disorders in human beings and with regard to the conducted studies , the Melissa officinalis plant has been used to treat epilepsy disease. Therefore, in this empirical work the effect of pretreatment with hydro-alcoholic extract of this plant compared to Phenytoin in the prevention of the epileptic convulsions caused by Pentylenetetrazole was studied.
Material and Methods: In this research the following groups receive the following drug doses intraperitoneal : four groups received different concentrations of extract (25, 50 , 100 , 200 mg/kg body weight), the positive control group was tested by Phenytoin (5 mg/kg) and the negative control group was tested by normal saline. Data were analyzed by kruskal – Wallis test and Tukey test.
Results: Injection of 50 and 100mg of the extract per kilogram of the body weight during the30 minutes interval before the systemic injection of Pentylenetetrazole, resulted in delay in the average onset time of the clonic convulsion Seizures with respect to the control group (P = 0.001) and also delay in the average onset time of the tonic – clonic Seizures with respect to the control group (P = 0.02) and besides the rates of mortality in that group of animals which were pretreated with 50 and 100 mg concentrations of the extract per kg of body weight indicated a significant difference with respect to the control group (P = 0.004) . Mortality rate was 100 % in the negative control group,37.5 % in the50 mg/kg weight group and 12.5 % in the 100 mg/kg weight group and 12.5 % in the group treated by Phenytoin.
Conclusions: This study indicated that the hydro-alcoholic extract of the Melissa officinalis plant can cause helpful effects on Seizures induced by Pentylenetetrazole in rats. Therefore, further studies are needed to understand the extent and mechanism of these effects.

• Implication for health policy/practice/research/medical education:
  The results of this article may be used by other investigators for future study about precise mechanism of anticonvulsive effects of this plant. If these results approved by other research, can be used with clinicians for prevention of seizure in human trails. These results can be used with other investigators for analysis of this extract for effective components.
• Please cite this paper as:
  Gorgich E, Komeili Gh, Zakeri Z, Ebrahimi S. Comparing Anticonvulsive Effect of Melissa officinalis` Hydro-Alcoholic Extract and Phenytoin in Rat. Health Scope. 2012; 1(1):44-8. DOI: 10.5812/JHS.4816

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