Effects of FXR gene deletion on neurobehaviors and neurotransmission systems in female mice / 中国药理学通报

ABSTRACT

Aim To investigate how Farnesoid X re-ceptor (FXR),a nuclear hormone receptor,acts on neurological behaviors such as emotion,social behav-ior,memory and so on.Methods FXR’s function in central nervous system was evaluated by conducting a battery of behavioral tests including elevated plus maze test (EPMT),forced-swimming test (FST),social in-teraction test (SIT ), and passive avoidance test (PAT),and the contents of neurotransmitters were de-termined by the LC-MS /MS method in FXR knockout (KO)female mice and their wild-type controls.Re-sults FXR KO mice showed significantly increased immobility time in FST (P <0.01 ),and it showed in-creased tendency to enter the open arms in EMPT (P<0.01 ).The number of probing the open arms by FXR KO mice was more than that of the controls.Mo-reover,in SIT,FXR KO mice had remarkably in-creased sniffing interactions with the stranger mouse in the same cage (P <0.01 ).But in PAT,the latency for FXR KO mice to enter the dark chamber on the test day and the number of FXR KO mice to enter the dark chamber didn’t differ from those wild-type mice.In hippocampus,the contents of GABA,Glu,and NE were decreased prominently in FXR KO mice (P <0.05,P <0.05 and P <0.01 ,respectively)as well as the ratio of GABA to Glu (P <0.05).But in pre-frontal cortex,none of the neurotransmitters examined showed any difference between FXR KO mice and their controls.Conclusion FXR may be involved in main-tenance of the homeostasis of neural transmission in the central nervous system,thereby influences the emotion-al and social behavior in animals.