Electroacupuncture improves learning-memory ability possibly by suppressing apoptosis and down-regulating expression of apoptosis-related proteins in hippocampus and cerebral cortex in immature mice with Alzheimer's disease / 针刺研究

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the effect of electroacupuncture (EA) at "Baihui"(GV20), "Fengfu"(GV16) and bilateral "Shenshu"(BL23) on learning-memory ability, apoptosis in the hippocampus and expression of Aβ, Caspase 3, Bax and Bcl-2 proteins in the hippocampus and cerebral cortex in immature mice with Alzheimer's disease (AD), so as to explore its mechanism underlying improvement of AD. METHODS: Forty APP/PS1 transgenic male young mice were equally randomized into model and EA groups and 20 C57BL/6J male young mice were used as the normal control. EA (10 Hz, about 2 mA) was applied to GV20-BL23 and GV16-BL23 for 20 min, once daily, 6 days a week for 16 weeks. The Morris water maze swimming test was used to evaluate the animals' learning-memory ability. Congo red staining and immunohistochemical staining were used to detect senile plaques in the hippocampus (dentate gyrus) and cerebral cortex tissues. Terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase-mediated dUTP Nick-end Labeling (TUNEL) was used to detect the cellular apoptosis of hippocampus. The expression levels of apoptosis related factors Caspase 3, Bax and Bcl-2 were detected by Western blot. RESULTS: After modeling, the escape latency of place navigation test of Morris water maze swimming tasks was significantly increased (P0.05). CONCLUSION: EA of GV20, GV16 and BL23 can effectively improve the learning-memory ability in AD mice, which may be related to its function in inhibiting neuronal apoptosis in the hippocampus and down-regulating the expression levels of Aβ, Caspase 3 and Bax proteins in both hippocampus and cerebral cortex.