The cerebellum is the second largest part of the mammalian brain; the cerebellum cortex has a striking morphology consisting of folia and fissures and variety of cells morphologically and functionally, so it considered an ideal system to study the development of the central nervous system in the mammals.
The ontogenesis of the cerebellum in the mammals takes place along long period of the development from the embryogenesis to the postnatal time after delivery to reach to the mature form morphologically and physiologically, therefore these stages are very critical and sensitive to the growth of the cerebellum.
The antiepileptic drugs which are used in the control and treatment many neurological disorders in the infants, children and pregnant women like epilepsy are one of the most drugs that have harmful effects on the growth and development of the nervous system; Pregabalin (PGB) (Lyrica®) is the last generation of the Antiepileptic medications. The study was aimed to deal with the ontogenesis of the white rat cerebellum during normal neurogenesis and determine the histopathological changes in the cortex of the developing cerebellum prenatally after administrated with three routine therapeutic antiepileptic doses of Pregabalin drug from the first day of gestation until the 21 postnatally.
The present study was done on 80 pregnant rats which divided into three prenatal group of 60 pregnant rats 30 in each control group and 10 pregnant rats of each of the three treatment groups which exposed to three antiepileptic doses of Pregabalin drug (150, 300 and 600 mg/kg b.wt / day) were administrated to the pregnant rats during gestation period from the first day to the day of normal delivery.
The results showed that that the lower antiepileptic dose of the PGB (150mg/kg b.wt/day) has not any histopathological effects on the cerebellum along the embryogenesis period. While the effect of the other doses (300 and 600 mg/kg b.wt/day) revealed different degree of degenerative changes and necrosis in both granular and primitive purkinje layer cells and thickness in the external granular layer of the metencephalon anlage and low differentiation in the fibrous layer of the cortex, these degenerative changes were more obvious along the progress of the embryonic stages of the fetuses and specially in the (600mg/kg b.wt/ day) treated group.
