Abstract
Age-related neurodegenerative diseases and vascular dementia are major challenges to the modern health care system. Most neurodegenerative diseases are associated with impaired spatial working memory and anxiety-like behavior. Thus, it is important to understand the underlying cellular mechanisms of neurodegenerative diseases in different regions of the brain to develop an effective therapeutic approach. In our previous research paper, we have reported the ameliorative effect of curcumin in Cd-induced hippocampal neurodegeneration. However, recently many researchers had reported the important role of the prefrontal cortex in higher cognitive functions. Therefore, to look into the cellular mechanism of curcumin protection against Cd-induced prefrontal cortex neurotoxicity, we investigated spatial working memory, anxiety-like behavior and analyzed prefrontal cortex inflammatory markers (IL-6, IL-10, and TNFα), antioxidant enzymes (SOD, GSH, and CAT), and pro-oxidant MDA level. Further, we conducted histological studies of the prefrontal cortex in Swiss albino mice exposed to cadmium (2.5 mg/kg). We observed that curcumin treatment improved the spatial working memory and anxiety-like behavior of mice through reduction of prefrontal cortex neuroinflammation and oxidative stress as well as increasing the number of viable prefrontal cortex neuronal cells. Our result suggests that environmental heavy metal cadmium can induce behavioral impairment in mice through prefrontal cortex cellular inflammation and oxidative stress. We found that curcumin has a potential therapeutic property to mitigate these behavioral and biochemical impairments induced by cadmium.
Highlights
Neurodegenerative diseases are the major concern of the modern health care system.Though the advancements in the medical field have increased the lifespan of human beings, the occurrence of age-related neurodegenerative diseases and dementia-related illnesses have increased from 4.0% in 1990 to 8.2% in 2019 [1] Depressive disorders (33.8%) and anxiety disorders (19%) are the major contributors to mental illness affecting close to about197.3 million people (~14.3%) [2]
When we investigated the percentage of body weight gained experiment period (60 days), we observed a significant reduction in the Cd-treated mice as during the experiment period (60 days), we observed a significant reduction in the Cdcompared to the vehicle control group
This is evident from the prolonged exposure of the mice to different doses of Cd that resulted in decreased weight gain, impaired spatial working memory, and increased anxiety-like behavior, and increased prefrontal cortex oxidative stress and neuroinflammation
Summary
Neurodegenerative diseases are the major concern of the modern health care system.Though the advancements in the medical field have increased the lifespan of human beings, the occurrence of age-related neurodegenerative diseases and dementia-related illnesses have increased from 4.0% in 1990 to 8.2% in 2019 [1] Depressive disorders (33.8%) and anxiety disorders (19%) are the major contributors to mental illness affecting close to about197.3 million people (~14.3%) [2]. Several factors including daily light/dark cycle, diet, Antioxidants 2021, 10, 1710. Antioxidants 2021, 10, x FOR PEER REVIEW physical exercise, heavy metal toxicity, and social stress regulate neurodegeneration in and anxiety disorders (19%) are the major contributors to mental illness affecting close to both central and peripheral nervous but oxidative and neuroinflammations about. Several factors stress including daily light/dark cycle, are major causes ofphysical neurodegeneration [3,4,5,6,7,8]. These diet, exercise, heavy metal toxicity, and social stress regulate neurodegeneration in both central and peripheral nervous systems, but the oxidative stress and two processes occur simultaneously and coexist [9,10]. In most ogy of depression and anxiety associated with neurodegenerative disease in patients is neurodegenerative disorders, these two processes occur simultaneously and coexist [9,10]
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