Neuronal degeneration and a decrease in laminin-like immunoreactivity is associated with elevated tissue-type plasminogen activator in the rat hippocampus after kainic acid injection.

Tissue-type plasminogen activator (tPA) is a serine protease that converts the inactive precursor plasminogen to the active protease plasmin. In the central nervous system, tPA has been suggested to participate in plasticity, memory and the neuronal degeneration caused by excitotoxins, but its precise functions during these processes are still unclear. We show in this report that tPA antigen level and extracellular tPA activity increased in the hippocampus during the early stages of neuronal degeneration in the CA3 region following the injection of kainic acid (KA) into the lateral cerebral ventricles. The increase in tPA antigen level was transient and its peak was at 4 h after the injection. tPA activity was also increased 4 h after the injection, but it remained at a high level for more than 8 h. Histological zymography showed that the increase in tPA activity was mainly localized in the CA3 region. In the same region, the disappearance of interneuronal laminin-like immunoreactivity and atrophic changes in pyramidal neurons were observed 4 h after the injection of KA. These results suggested that such focal and transient increases in tPA synthesis and release, which result in the proteolysis of laminin through plasminogen activation, could be involved in the neuronal degeneration in the CA3 region after the injection of KA.