An Experimental Research On The Cholinergic Pathogenesis Of Vascular Dementia

Experimental research on the cholinergic pathogenesis of vascular dementia (VaD) in vivo and in vitro. The results suggested that as time went on, there were irreversible ischemic pathological changes in basal forebrain , cholinergic neuron lesion, decreased quantity of nicotine acetylcholine receptor and lower level of CREB phosphorylation in vivo which led to learning and memory performance deficits which could be improved by cholinesterase inhibitors, while in vitro there were decrease of CREB phosphorylation and neurite length of hypoxia primary cultured hippocampal neurons ,otherwise the muscarine or nicotine acetylcholine receptor agonist could reverse this process. We conclude that cerebral hypoperfusion impair center cholinergic neurons which lead to decrease in synthesizing acetylcholine , less quantity of receptors and malfunction of signal transduction pathway associated with isoforms of receptors which inactive phosphorylation of CREB and finally result in cognition impairment of VaD.