The susceptibility of albino and gray Norway rats to audiogenic seizures.

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
32 [male] and 26 [female] gray Norway rats (from Dr. Helen King''s colony) and 81 [male] and 81 [female] albino rats were submitted to a 5-min. air-blast 5 days per week from the ages of 21-100 days. The gray Norway rats seem not only to have relatively more seizures than the albinos, but they react more violently than do the latter. The decrease in attacks with age reported earlier by these authors is observed for the albinos, but seems delayed beyond 100 days for the gray Norway animals. In both groups the [male][male] seem more susceptible than the [female][female], although this difference is greater for the grays than for the albinos, and beyond about 67 days for the latter group the [female][female] seem the more susceptible. For both groups animals tested in Spring and Summer have more seizures than those (of same age) tested in Winter-Spring, while these exceed those tested in Fall-Winter. The authors confirm the following "phenomena attendant upon and following convulsive seizures," cyanosis, ejaculation, altered heart-rate and respiration, excretion, and absence of pupillary reflex; they further report "(a) erection of hair, (b) dilation of pupils, (c) retraction of testes, and relaxation of vaginal aperture, (d) occasionally, extravasation of blood from the orbits of rats which have undergone a steady succession of tonic convulsions; and (e) extreme peripheral vasoconstriction....." "High frequency of attacks in a few albino rats suggests factors other than temperament as causing susceptibility to seizures.".