Abstract
Sepsis and its complications are the leading causes of mortality in intensive care units, accounting for 10-50% of deaths. Intensive care unit survivors present long-term cognitive impairment, including alterations in memory, attention, concentration, and/or global loss of cognitive function. In the present study, we investigated behavioral alterations in sepsis-surviving rats. One hundred and ten male Wistar rats (3-4 months, 250-300 g) were submitted to cecal ligation and puncture (CLP), and 44 were submitted to sham operation. Forty-four rats (40%) survived after CLP, and all sham-operated animals survived and were used as control. Twenty animals of each group were used in the object recognition task (10 in short-term memory and 10 in long-term memory), 12 in the plus-maze test and 12 in the forced swimming test. Ten days after surgery, the animals were submitted individually to an object recognition task, plus-maze and forced swimming tests. A significant impairment of short- and long-term recognition memory was observed in the sepsis group (recognition index 0.75 vs 0.55 and 0.74 vs 0.51 for short- and long-term memory, respectively (P < 0.05). In the elevated plus-maze test no difference was observed between groups in any of the parameters assessed. In addition, sepsis survivors presented an increase in immobility time in the forced swimming test (180 vs 233 s, P < 0.05), suggesting the presence of depressive-like symptoms in these animals after recovery from sepsis. The present results demonstrated that rats surviving exposure to CLP, a classical sepsis model, presented recognition memory impairment and depressive-like symptoms but not anxiety-like behavior.
Highlights
Sepsis and its complications are a leading cause of mortality, accounting for 1050% of deaths on intensive care units [1,2,3,4]
The results indicate that sepsis survivors presented an impairment of novel object recognition memory
The mechanisms involved in these cognitive impairments remain unclear
Summary
Sepsis and its complications are a leading cause of mortality, accounting for 1050% of deaths on intensive care units [1,2,3,4]. Septic encephalopathy represents brain dysfunction due to sepsis or the systemic inflammatory response syndrome, and has been reported to occur in 8-70% of septic patients depending on the inclusion criteria employed [6,7,8]. Survivors of critical care, including septic patients, may have persistenty compromised organ function, which may result in symptoms such as dyspnea, fatigue, depression, and impaired functional status. Several studies have demonstrated that critical care survivors present long-term cognitive impairment, including alterations in memory, attention, concentration, and/or global loss of cognitive function [9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17]. The neurobiological mechanisms involved in this cognitive impairment remain unclear
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