Fol. Biol. 2014, 60, 123-132
Time Course of Cerebral Hypoperfusion-Induced Neurodegenerative Changes in the Cortex of Male and Female Rats
To study time-dependent and gender-specific intracellular and biochemical mechanisms that lead to neurodegeneration due to moderate but persistent reduction of cerebral blood flow, adult male and female Wistar rats were divided into two main groups – controls that underwent sham operation and animals subjected to permanent bilateral occlusion of common carotid arteries. Animals were sacrificed 3, 7 or 90 days following the insult. Expression of several apoptotic proteins in synaptic fractions along with Fluoro-Jade B staining and DNA fragmentation assay were used to estimate the apoptotic processes and potential neurodegeneration in cerebral cortex. Data suggest a time-specific increase of Bax as well as timeand gender-associated downregulation in protein expression of Bcl-2, up-regulation of procaspase 3, accompanied with increased cleavage of procaspase 3 and PARP in synaptic terminals. Furthermore, time- but not gender-specific neurodegeneration was observed. Our findings support the concept of timeand gender-associated response to permanent bilateral occlusion of common carotid arteries, which would enable better understanding of the mechanisms underlying cerebral hypoperfusion.
Keywords
neurodegeneration, apoptosis, cerebral hypoperfusion, cerebral cortex, rat.
Funding
This project was supported by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development, Projects Nos. 173044 and 41014.
References
Copyright
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.
