A patient with chronic glaucoma and a history of contact allergic dermatitis to topical ophthalmic , adrenergic blocking drugs developed persistent ocular symptoms despite avoidance of , blockers. He was further investigated for possible allergy to pilocarpine. Case report A 70-year-old man presented with a persistent itch involving his eyes and a stinging and burning sensation aggravated by in...

Pilocarpine-induced seizures in rats provide a widely animal model of temporal lobe epilepsy. Some evidences reported in the literature suggest that at least 1 h of status epilepticus (SE) is required to produce subsequent chronic phase, due to the SE-related acute neuronal damage. However, recent data seems to indicate that neuro-inflammation plays a crucial role in epileptogenesis, modulating...

Statins may act on inflammatory responses, decreasing oxidative stress and also reducing brain inflammation in several brain disorders. Epileptogenesis is a process in which a healthy brain becomes abnormal and predisposed to generating spontaneous seizures. We previously reported that lovastatin could prevent neuroinflammation in pilocarpine-induced status epilepticus (SE). In this context, th...

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) appear to be involved in several neurodegenerative disorders. We tested the hypothesis that oxidative stress could have a role in the hippocampal neurodegeneration observed in temporal lobe epilepsy induced by pilocarpine. We first determined the spatio-temporal pattern of ROS generation, by means of detection with dihydroethidium oxidation, in the CA1 and CA3 area...

Ghrelin, a 28-amino-acid peptide, is mainly secreted by the stomach. Evidence has shown ghrelin to have neuroprotective effects. However, whether ghrelin protects hippocampal neurons against cell death in pilocarpine-induced seizures is unknown. We used Nissl staining to show that ghrelin attenuated the neuronal loss caused by pilocarpine-induced seizures in the hippocampus. Ghrelin exerted the...

Pilocarpus species have been exploited as the only source of the imidazole alkaloid pilocarpine (used in glaucoma treatment), since its isolation up to the present. Almost all Pilocarpus species are native from Brazil. Because of the medicinal importance of pilocarpine, several of them are in the path of extinction. Other secondary metabolites, such as coumarins, flavonoids and terpenes, were d...

Two cases of severe corneal oedema occurred after the use of intraocular pilocarpine. Experimental investigations were conducted with cultured bovine corneal endothelial cells exposed for 5 minutes to 1% pilocarpine solutions of varying composition. Cells were destroyed in solutions not isotonic with aqueous humour, and calcium-free ionic solutions caused loss of cell adhesion without loss of v...