Effect Of Cerebellar Fastigial Nucleus Electrical Stimulation On Tert Expression And Mitochondrial Apoptosis Pathway In Rats With Focal Cerebral Ischemia And Reperfusion

Objective: Electrical stimulation of the cerebellar fastigial nucleus (FN) in rat confers remarkable protection from brain injury . The neuroprotection is, in part, mediated by suppression of apoptosis. We sought to determine whether FN stimulation exerts the antiapoptotic activity of telomerase reverse transcriptase(TERT)following electrical stimulation of the cerebellar fastigial nucleus (FN) in rats with cerebral ischemia/reperfusion.Methods: Adult male Wistar rats (n=100) were randomly divided into three groups: a sham surgery group, a modeling group (2-hour cerebral ischemia, followed by 24, 48 and 72 hours of reperfusion) and a FN-stimulating group (electrical stimulation of the FN for 1-hour one day before 2-hour cerebral ischemia, followed by 24, 48 and 72 hours of reperfusion).Ischemic lesion volumes were measured following TTC staining. Exerting HE staining to observe morphological changes in rat brain .The expression of TERT and Bax were detected using immunohistochemical methods, and apoptotic cells were detected by TUNEL. The co-expression of TERT and Bax was detected by immunofluorescence double-labeling combined with laser confocal microscopy.Results: The size of the cerebral infarct was significantly larger in the modeling group than in the FN-stimulating group (P<0.05) at all reperfusion time points. Compared with the modeling groups, the FN-stimulating groups had a significantly larger number of TERT-positive cells (P<0.05) and a significantly reduced number of TUNEL-positive cells (P<0.05). The number of Bax-positive cells at different reperfusion time points in the FN-stimulating group was not significantly different from those in the modeling group (P>0.05). TERT partly co-localized with Bax in the cytoplasm. The number of double-labeled cells was significantly higher in the FN-stimulating group compared with the modeling group (P<0.05).Conclusions: Cerebellar fastigial nucleus electrical stimulation can promote the expression of TERT, TERT in cytoplasm may interfere the conformational activation of Bax , prevent Bax translocation from the cytoplasm to the mitochondrial membrane, involve in inhibition of mitochondrial apoptosis pathway.