ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND:As a neurotrophic factor, basic fibroblast growth factors extensively distribute in the central nervoussystem,andplay an important physiological roleby combinationwith their relative receptors. OBJECTIVE:To investigate the effect of basic fibroblast growth factors on the learning ability and proliferation of nestin-positive hippocampal neural stem cels in rats with vascular dementia. METHODS:Totaly 30 Sprague-Dawley rats were randomly divided into vascular dementia, sham operation and treatment groups. The vascular dementia and treatment groups were for preparing vascular dementia model, and the treatment group was given subcutaneous injection of basic fibroblast growth factors. Subsequently, at 4 weeks, the learning ability of rats and the number of nestin-positive hippocampal neural stem cels was detected by the Morris water maze test and immunohistochemical staining, respectively. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION:Compared with thevascular dementia groupthe latency period was significantlyshorterin thesham operation and treatment groups, and the number oftimes crossing the target quadrant was significantlyhigher in thesham operation and treatment groups (P 0.05). Under fluorescence microscope, yelow-green fluorescence stained neuronspositive forbasic fibroblast growth factorcould be found in the CA1, CA2 and CA3 of the treatment group. Additionaly, the number of nestin-positive neurons in the CA1 area of the hippocampus was the most inthetreatment group, folowed by the sham operation group, andthe leastin the vascular dementia group. These results suggest that the subcutaneous injection of basic fibroblast growth factors can migrate to the hippocampus,, andimprove the learning ability of rats by inducing proliferation of nestin-positive hippocampal neural stem cels.