Mechanism Underlying Cerebral Ischemia-Induced Learning-Memory Damage And The Protection Of Breviscapine

With the aging of the world population growing, the incidence of cerebrovascular diseases is increasing, and the high mortality and morbidity rates of them pose a serious threat to human health and survival. Cerebral ischemia is one of the important reasons for the diseases. Therefore, the investigation of the mechanisms underlying cerebral ischemic damage is very significant for the prevention and treatment of cerebrovascular diseases. The pathological and physiological process caused by cerebral ischemia, including energy exhaust, neurons damage after reperfusion, reorder of glial cells, ion balance disorders, lipid peroxidation caused by free radical damage, inflammation and excitatory amino acid neurotransmitter changes, can induce neuronal cell death, then resulting in the injury of brain functions such as learning and memory. However, the mechanism underlymg cerebral ischemia-induced learning-memory damage has not a verdict at present.In the present study, Open field behavior, Morris water maze, and paraffin section techniques, agarose gel electrophoresis techniques, reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) amplification techniques were used to investigate the mechanism underlying cerebral ischemia-induced learning-memory damage, further to study the protection of breviscapine against repeated cerebral ischemia-reperfusion induced by fastening bilateral common carotid artery.The spontaneous behavior and learning-memory of repeated ischemia-reperfusion mice were first tested using open field and Morris water maze. The results showed that repeated ischemia-reperfusion did not affect the spontaneous behavior (P>0.05), but impaired learning-memory (P<0.01). Regarding Ginkgo biloba extract (35mg·kg^-1) as a positive control, breviscapine (5,20,80mg·kg^-1) can dramatically improve the ability of learning-memory after ischemia-reperfusion (P<0.05, P<0.01).