Experimental Study Of Aqueous Extract Of Ginger On Treatment Of Vascular Dementia In Rats

Vascular dementia(VD) is the disease in which the cognitive dysfunction, learning and memeory ability impaired, language, movement and personality dysfunction due to anoxemia, ischemic and bleeding cerebrovascular disease. VD could not only impair health of patients in body and mind, but also brought economic burden to family and society, due to declining in the quality of living. By now, there is lack of the novel therapeutic drugs and methods yet. Ginger, as food and traditional Chinese medicine, has been proved having more pharmacological functions. Ginger could likely provent and treat VD because it's action on antioxidant and free radical eliminating, inhibiting arachidomic acid and hemoblast collecting, decreasing blood fat and antiarteriosclerosis and cerebral ischemia and reperfusion injure protecting, etc.ObjectiveTo sduty the therapeutic effect and mechanism of aqueous extract of ginger on VD in rats in order to provide the scientific foundation for the health protection and clinic application of ginger.MethodsMale SD rats were randomly divided into sham-operation group, model contral group, huperzine A group and high, middle and low dosage groups of ginger aqueous extract. The model of VD was established by bilateral corotid ligation and repeated cerebral ischemia reperfusion. Spatial learning and memory abilities in both place navigation test and spatial prob test were evaluated with Morris water maze. The activities of acetylcholinesterase (AChE) in cortex and striatum tissue and SOD and MDA content in brain tissue were detected by spectrophotometry. Nissl staining was used to investigate pathological changes in cerebral cortex and hippocampus. ResultsCompared with sham-operation group, the rats in model control group exhibited serious learning and memory deficits in both place navigation test and spatial prob test, AChE activity decreased significantly in striatum tissue (P<0.05)but not changed in cerebral cortex(P>0.05),. Aqueous extract of ginger could improve the learning and memory abilities in both place navigation test and spatial prob test after treatment for 20 days (P<0.05-0.01), but not effective after treatment for 10 days (P>0.05), compared with model contral group. Aqueous extract of ginger could increase AChE activity in striatum tissue (P<0.05-0.01)and the ratio of SOD/MDA , decrease MDA content in brain tissue(P<0.05), but not effective on AChE activity in cerebral cortex (P>0.05), compared with model contral group.ConclusionThe aqueous extracts from ginger has obvious effects on improving learning and momery abilities of VD model rats. Antioxidant activity and increasing the function of cholinergic neuron are likely to partial mechanism.Innovation1 Study of ginger on learning and momery abilities in rats with VD.2 Protective effect of ginger on cholinergic neuron in brain tissue of rats with VD.