Enhanced A3R immunoreactivity in hippocampal tissue from epileptic patients
The unexpected finding that an antiseizure drug activates A 3R, together with the finding that this drug only affects excitatory transmission under hyperexcitable conditions, led us to hypothesize that chronic hyperexcitability leads to an overexpression of A 3R. To address this possibility, we used human hippocampal samples from 8 patients with drug-resistant epilepsy who underwent focal hippocampal resection (clinical details in Table 2). As controls, we used 6 human hippocampal samples obtained post-mortem (post-mortem delay ≤ 10h, details in Table 2). Western blot analysis revealed enhanced A 3R immunoreactivity in samples from epileptic patients when compared with control samples (P<0.05, Figure 6).