ABSTRACT
Ischemic brain injury is a leading cause of sever neurological and neurobehavioral deficits and death. The hippocampus plays vital roles in learning and memory processes and it is impaired by ischemic insults. Cerebral ischemia/reperfusion leads to Oxidative stress damage impairing the hippocampus. Here we tested whether ascorbic acid and adenosine receptor played a neuroprotective role in a mouse brain ischemia model induced by common carotid arteries occlusion. Adult male mice were randomly assigned into nine experimental groups. The animals were subjected to ischemia by the ligation of common carotid arteries for 15 min. Drugs were injected intrapritoneally once daily for 7 days. Behavioral tests performed at day 14 and then mice were killed at day 21 and their brains were fixed for microscopic studies and some samples were prepared for western blot analysis. Western blot analysis utilized to evaluate the expression of apoptosis-related proteinsin the hippocampus. Short-term memory was assessed by shuttle-box test. Our findings revealed that administration of vitamin C and N6-cyclopentyladenosine (CPA) significantly attenuated ischemia-induced brain injury. Vitamin C and CPA administration increased the expression of anti-apoptotic protein Bcl-2 and decreased the expression of pro-apoptotic protein Bax in the ischemic mice. Ischemia caused short-term memory loss that was improved by vitamin c and CPA treatment. Our results demonstrate that treatment with vitamin C and adenosine receptor agonist attenuated cerebral ischemia/reperfusion-induced brain injury as a potential neuroprotective agent.
