Hydroxysafflor Yellow A (HSYA) Improves Learning and Memory in Cerebral Ischemia Reperfusion-Injured Rats via Recovering Synaptic Plasticity in the Hippocampus.

Yanhong Duan,Ming Xia,Wendi He,Qiujuan Zhang,Zheng Zhao,Xiaohua Cao,Lu Yu

doi:10.3389/fncel.2018.00371

Abstract

Hydroxysafflor yellow A (HSYA) is the major active chemical component of the safflower plant flower, which is widely used in Chinese medicine for cerebrovascular and cardiovascular disease treatment. Recent studies have demonstrated that HSYA exerts neuroprotective effect on cerebral ischemia, such as neuronal anti-apoptosis, antioxidant activity and oxygen free radical-scavenging. However, whether and how HSYA has a protective effect on cognitive impairment induced by cerebral ischemia reperfusion remains elusive. In the present study, by using the middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) model, we found that 8 mg/kg and 16 mg/kg HSYA administration by common carotid artery (CCA) injection improved impaired cognitive function in Morris water maze (MWM) and passive avoidance tasks, but not 4 mg/kg HSYA treatment, suggesting that HSYA treatment in a certain concentration can improve cognitive impairment in MCAO rats. Furthermore, we found that 8 mg/kg HSYA treatment rescued the impaired long-term potentiation (LTP) in hippocampus of MCAO rats. Taken together, these results for the first time demonstrate that HSYA has the capacity to protect cognitive function and synaptic plasticity against cerebral ischemia-reperfusion injury, and provide a new insight that HSYA may be a promising alternative for recovery of cognitive dysfunction after brain ischemic injury.

Highlights

Stroke is the third leading cause of death and adult disability worldwide, of the elderly (Chen et al, 2012), which is broadly classified as ischemic stroke and hemorrhagic stroke
The results showed that neurological scores (Figure 1A, sham, 16.75 ± 0.16, n = 8; middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO), 9.25 ± 0.16, n = 8; Student’s t-test, P < 0.0001) was significantly decreased in MCAO rats
After Hydroxysafflor yellow A (HSYA) treatment, whether basal synaptic transmission in MCAO rats was effected by HSYA, we found that 8 mg/kg of HSYA which could recover the cognitive impairment after MCAO has no effect on both input-output curves and Paired-pulse facilitation (PPF) in MCAO rats

Summary

Introduction

Stroke is the third leading cause of death and adult disability worldwide, of the elderly (Chen et al, 2012), which is broadly classified as ischemic stroke (approximately 80%–90%) and hemorrhagic stroke (approximately 10%–20%; Goldstein et al, 2006). Ischemic stroke occurs when an artery in the brain is blocked resulting from a transient or permanent reduction in cerebral blood. It has been reported that the impaired sensorimotor function after ischemic stroke could be recovered with time (DeVries et al, 2001; Fluri et al, 2017), cognitive and neuronal dysfunction is irreversible (Bayat et al, 2012, 2015). Hydroxysafflor yellow A (HSYA), first isolated by Meselhy et al in 1993 (Zhu et al, 2011), is the major active component of safflower which was confirmed that the structure is C-Glycosyl quinochalcones (Black, 2011; Li et al, 2016) and has proven to be water-soluble and penetrative to the blood brain barrier (Meselhy et al, 1993)

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion