Figure 5.

Altered expression of glutamic acid decarboxylase 67 (GAD67) measured by western blotting in different brain regions in the development of the central nervous system. (A) Representative WBs were shown to measure GAD67 protein expression in the prefrontal cortex (PFC), temporal cortex (TC), somatosensory cortex (SC), hippocampus (HC) and cerebellum cortex (CC) in both control and VPA-treated rats at the PND7, PND14, PND35, PND45 and PND72, respectively. (B–G) Quantification of GAD67 expression in PFC indicated that no changes occurred at the early stage of development including PND7 (p > 0.05), PND14 (p > 0.05), PND28 (p > 0.05) and PND35 (p > 0.05), in VPA-treated rats. Interestingly, VPA-treated rats had the increased GAD67 expression at the young adult stage such as PND45 (*p < 0.05) and PN72d (*p < 0.05) compared with matched control rats. GAD67 expression in TC in two groups was same at the PND7, PND14, PND28, PND35 and PND45, but there was low expression of GAD67 in TC in VPA group than that in control group at the PND72 (*p < 0.05). There were no significant differences of the GAD67 expression in SC in two groups at all the test time points. Notably, GAD67 expressions in both HC (t-test, *p < 0.05) and CC (t-test, *p < 0.05 and **p < 0.01) were lower in VPA group than in control group at all the test time points.