Epilepsy significantly reduces the patient’s quality of life, and we still need to develop new therapeutic approaches to control it. Transplantation of cells such as Sertoli cells (SCs), having a potent ability to release a variety of growth and immunoprotective substances, have made them a potential candidate to deal with neurological diseases like epilepsy. Hence, this study aims to evaluate whether SCs transplant effectively protects the hippocampus astrocytes and neurons to oppose seizure damage. For this purpose, the effects of bilateral intrahippocampal transplantation of SCs were investigated on the rats with the pentylenetetrazol (PTZ) induced seizure. After one-month, post-graft analysis was performed regarding behavior, immunohistopathology, and the distribution of the hippocampal cells. Our findings showed SCs transplantation reduced astrogliosis, astrocytes process length, the number of branches, and intersections distal to the soma of the hippocampus in the seizure group. In rats with grafted SCs, there was a drop in the hippocampal caspase-3 expression. Moreover, the SCs showed another protective impact, as shown by an improvement in pyramidal neurons’ number and spatial distribution. The findings suggested that SCs transplantation can potently modify astrocytes’ reactivation and inflammatory responses.

癫痫显着降低患者的生活质量，我们仍然需要开发新的治疗方法来控制它。支持细胞（SC）等细胞的移植具有释放多种生长和免疫保护物质的强大能力，使其成为治疗癫痫等神经系统疾病的潜在候选者。因此，本研究旨在评估干细胞移植是否能有效保护海马星形胶质细胞和神经元以抵抗癫痫发作损伤。为此，研究了双侧海马内 SC 移植对戊四氮 (PTZ) 诱导癫痫发作的大鼠的影响。一个月后，对行为、免疫组织病理学和海马细胞的分布进行移植后分析。我们的研究结果表明，SCs 移植减少了癫痫发作组海马体远端的星形胶质细胞增生、星形胶质细胞突起长度、分支数量和交叉点。在移植 SC 的大鼠中，海马 caspase-3 表达下降。此外，SCs还表现出另一种保护作用，锥体神经元数量和空间分布的改善表明了这一点。研究结果表明，SCs 移植可以有效改变星形胶质细胞的再激活和炎症反应。