Effect of surgery under ketamine anesthesia during mid-pregnancy on cognitive function of offspring rats / 中华麻醉学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To evaluate the effects of surgery under ketamine anesthesia during mid-pregnancy on cognitive function of offspring rats.Methods Thirty healthy pregnant Sprague-Dawley rats at14 days of gestation,aged 9-10 weeks,weighing 270-310 g,were assigned to 3 groups (n=10 each)using a random number table method:exploratory laparotomy under ketamine anesthesia group (KSgroup),ketamine anesthesia group (K group) and control group (C group).In KS group,ketamine 20mg/kg was injected via the caudal vein,and then ketamine was continuously infused at a rate of 130mg · kg-1 · h-1 after loss of right reflex to maintain anesthesia for 2 h,and exploratory laparotomy was per-formed after anesthesia was stable.Group K received no exploratory laparotomy and the other treatmentswere similar to those previously described in group KS.The equal volume of normal saline was given insteadin group C.The cliff avoidance,passive avoidance,and Morris water maze tests were used to evaluate the spatial perception and learning and memory ability of the offspring rats on postnatal days 7,23 and 30.Hippocampal tissues of rat offsprings were obtained at 24 h after the end of Morris water maze test to determine neural precursor cell-expressed developmentally downregulated protein 9 (NEDD9) and postsynaptic density 95 (PSD-95) protein and mRNA expression by quantitative polymerase chain reaction or Western blot.Results Compared with group C,the score of cliff avoidance was significantly decreased,the results of Morris water maze test showed that the escape latency was significantly prolonged,the platform-crossing times were decreased,the time spent in the second quadrant was shortened,the expression of NEDD9 and PSD-95 was down-regulated (P ＜ 0.05),and no significant changes were found in the expression of NEDD9 and PSD-95 mRNA in KS group,and no significant changes were found in the indexes mentioned above in K group (P＞0.05).There was no significant difference in the numberof errors in passive avoidance test among the three groups (P＞0.05).Conclusion Ketamine anesthesia during mid-pregnancy exerts no effect on the cognitive function of offspring rats,abdominal surgery under ketamine anesthesia impairs the spatial perception and learning and memory ability of offspring rats,and the mechanism is related to down-regulating the expression of NEDD9 and PSD-95 in hippocampi of offspring rats.