Neurotoxicological effects of 3-nitropropionic acid on the neonatal rat.

An increasing amount of data provides support for the hypothesis that periventricular leukomalacia (PVL) results from pre- or perinatal hypoxia occurring and is a major cause of cerebral palsy. In this work, anoxic and hypoxic-ischemic brain injuries were observed by us, after injection of neurotoxin 3-nitropropionic acid (3-NP) in a neonatal rat model on postnatal day 5 (P5). 3-NP-induced brain injury was examined in fixed brain sections at 24h (P6), 48h (P7), 72h (P8), and 9 days (P14) after 3-NP injection, respectively. Injection with 3-NP results in pathological injuries including white matter lesions, cerebral cortex destruction, callose thinness, and cerebral ventricle expansion. Numbers of immature oligodendrocytes turned to less in the model of 3-NP. Furthermore myeline basic protein expression became significantly lower after 3-NP was injected. Pathological changes after injection of 3-NP appeared also significantly among rats of postnatal day 5. The effect of the 3-NP neurotoxicity paradigm was evaluated in this study to further investigate the underlying pathology associated with PVL, which may yield a potential desirable model for clinic experiments.