Neurochemical Research

Parkinson's disease is a neurodegenerative disease affecting mainly the elderly population. It is characterized by the loss of dopaminergic neurons of the substantia nigra pars compacta region. Parkinson's disease patients exhibit motor symptoms like tremors, rigidity, bradykinesia/hypokinesia, and non-motor symptoms like depression, cognitive decline, delusion, and pain. Major pathophysiological factors which contribute to neuron loss include excess/misfolded alpha-synuclein aggregates, microglial cell-mediated neuroinflammation, excitotoxicity, oxidative stress, and defective mitochondrial function...

Alcohol (ethanol) dependence and related disorders are life-threatening conditions and source of suffering for the user, family members and society. Alcohol withdrawal syndrome (AWS) is a little-known dynamic process associated with a high frequency of relapses. A state of hyperglutamatergic neurotransmission and imbalanced GABAergic function is related to an increased susceptibility to seizures during alcohol withdrawal. Adenosine signaling display an important role in endogenous response to decrease seizure and related damages...

Dopamine (DA) is a catecholamine neurotransmitter widely distributed in the central nervous system. It participates in various physiological functions, such as feeding, anxiety, fear, sleeping and arousal. The regulation of feeding is exceptionally complex, involving energy homeostasis and reward motivation. The reward system comprises the ventral tegmental area (VTA), nucleus accumbens (NAc), hypothalamus, and limbic system. This paper illustrates the detailed mechanisms of eight typical orexigenic and anorexic neuropeptides that regulate food intake through the reward system...

We aimed to investigate the probable protective effects of gallic acid (GA) on cognitive deficits, hippocampal long term potentiation (LTP) impairments, and molecular changes induced by cerebral ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) in rats following exposure to ambient dust storm. After pretreatment with GA (100 mg/kg), or vehicle (Veh) (normal saline, 2 ml/kg) for ten days, and 60 minutes' exposure to dust storm including PM (PM, 2000-8000 g/m3) every day, 4-vessel occlusion (4VO) type of I/R was induced...

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is one of the most common neurodegenerative diseases in the world, which seriously affects AD patients' life quality. Recently, long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) have been reported to play a key role in AD pathogenesis, however, the specific mechanism remains unclear. Herein, we aimed to investigate the role of lncRNA NKILA in AD. The learning and memory performance of rats from streptozotocin (STZ)-treated or other treated groups were tested by Morris water maze test. Relative levels of genes and proteins were measured using RT-qPCR and Western blotting...

Microglia, innate immune cells of the brain, constantly monitor the dynamic changes of the brain microenvironment under physiological conditions and respond in time. Growing evidence suggests that microglia-mediated neuroinflammation plays an important role in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease. In this study, we investigated that the expression of IFITM3 was significantly upregulated in microglia under the Aβ treatment, and knockdown of IFITM3 in vitro suppressed the M1-like polarization of microglia...

A growing body of evidence has shown that seizure can trigger inflammatory cascades through increasing the expression of several inflammatory cytokines. It has been proved that peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-γ agonists have immunomodulatory, anti-inflammatory, and neuroprotective effects beyond the putative hypoglycemic effects. Thus, we investigated the inhibitory effect of rosiglitazone on the development of pentylenetetrazol (PTZ)-induced kindling via affecting the inflammatory pathway...

Microglia are the residential immune cells of central nervous system and they are crucial for brain development and homeostasis, as well as the progression of inflammatory brain diseases. To study microglia's physiological and pathological functions, one of the most widely used models is primary microglia culture from neonatal rodents. However, primary microglia culture is time consuming and needs a great number of animals. In our microglia culture, we found a strain of spontaneously immortalized microglia that continued to divide without any known genetic intervention...

Glial cells give rise to glioblastoma multiform as a primary brain tumor. In glioblastomas, neurons are destroyed via excitotoxicity which is the accumulation of excess glutamate in synaptic cavity. Glutamate Transporter 1 (GLT-1) is the main transporter that absorbs the excessive glutamate. Sirtuin 4 (SIRT4) was shown to have a potential protective role against excitotoxicity in previous studies. In this study, the regulation of dynamic GLT-1 expression by SIRT4 was analyzed in glia (immortalized human astrocytes) and glioblastoma (U87) cells...

Diabetic patients experience significant mortality and poor recovery following ischemic stroke. Our clinical and basic science studies demonstrate an overall immune suppression in the periphery of diabetic stroke patients, as well as within the central nervous system (CNS) of type-2 diabetic mice following hypoxia-ischemia (HI). Low doses of naltrexone (LDN) improved clinical outcomes in many autoimmune diseases by acting on opioid receptors to release β-endorphin which in turn balances inflammatory cytokines and modulates the opioid growth factor (OGF)-opioid growth factor receptor (OGFr) pathway...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Although the beneficial effects of curcumin, extracted from rhizomes of the ginger family genus Curcuma, on the repair and regeneration of nerves have been evaluated in vitro, there are few studies concerning its effects on axon myelination. Here, we used pheochromocytoma cells as an in vitro model of peripheral nerves. Pheochromocytoma cells were cultured alone or cocultured with Schwann cells and treated with increasing concentrations of curcumin. Cell growth was observed, and the expression levels of growth-associated protein 43 (GAP-43), microtubule-associated protein 2 (MAP-2), myelin basic protein (MBP), myelin protein zero (MPZ), Krox-20, and octamer binding factor 6 (Oct-6) were quantified...

Intermittent hypoxia (IH) is the primary pathological manifestation of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and the main cause of OSA-induced cognitive impairment. Hippocampal neurons are considered to be critical cells affected by IH. Transforming growth factor-β3 (TGF-β3) is a cytokine with a neuroprotective effect, which plays a crucial role in resisting hypoxic brain injury, while its role in IH-induced neuronal injury is still unclear. Here, we aimed to clarify the mechanism of TGF-β3 protecting IH-exposed neurons by regulating oxidative stress and secondary apoptosis...

Pericytes play critical roles in the maintenance of brain vascular homeostasis. However, very little is currently known about how pericytes regulate ischemic stroke-induced brain injury. Inflammation is a key event in the pathobiology of stroke, in which the nod-like receptor protein-3 (NLRP3) inflammasome is involved in, triggering sterile inflammatory responses and pyroptosis. In the current study, an immortalized cell line derived from human brain vascular pericytes (HBVPs) was constructed, and it showed that HBVPs challenged with oxygen glucose deprivation (OGD) displays pronounced cellular excretion of LDH, IL-1β, IL-18 and increased PI positive staining...

Ischemic stroke (IS), a devastating condition characterized by intracranial artery stenosis and middle cerebral artery occlusion leading to insufficient oxygen supply to the brain, is a major cause of death and physical disability worldwide. Recent research has demonstrated the critical role of circular RNAs (circRNAs), a class of covalently enclosed noncoding RNAs that are widespread in eukaryotic cells, in regulating various physiological and pathophysiological cellular processes, including cell apoptosis, autophagy, synaptic plasticity, and neuroinflammation...

PURPOSE: Immune-related pathways actively participate in the progression of schizophrenia (SCZ), however, roles of immune-related miRNAs in SCZ are still unclear. METHODS: A microarray expression study was conducted to explored roles of immune-related genes in SCZ. Functional enrichment analysis by using "clusterProfiler" was used to identify molecular alterations of SCZ. Protein-protein interaction (PPI) network was constructed and helped core molecular factors identification...

Epirubicin's (EPI) efficacy as a chemotherapeutic agent against breast cancer is limited by EPI's neurotoxicity associated with increased oxidative and inflammatory stressors. 3-Indolepropionic acid (3-IPA) derived from in vivo metabolism of tryptophan is reported to possess antioxidative properties devoid of pro-oxidant activity. In this regard, we investigated the effect of 3-IPA on EPI-mediated neurotoxicity in forty female rats (180-200 g; five cohorts (n = 6) treated as follows: Untreated control; EPI alone (2...

Neurons are highly dependent on mitochondrial ATP production and Ca2+ buffering. Neurons have unique compartmentalized anatomy and energy requirements, and each compartment requires continuously renewed mitochondria to maintain neuronal survival and activity. Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-gamma coactivator-1α (PGC-1α) is a key factor in the regulation of mitochondrial biogenesis. It is widely accepted that mitochondria are synthesized in the cell body and transported via axons to the distal end...

Aluminum is a ubiquitous metal that causes multiple brain pathologies such as, cognitive dysfunction and Alzheimer's disease like symptoms. Exposure to aluminum through drinking water is responsible for hampering learning and memory. This study aimed to compare (1) the time-dependent effect of aluminum exposure (keeping total exposure of 5850 mg/kg same) in two durations, 30 and 45 days, and (2) to compare post-exposure self-recovery effect after 20 days in both (30 and 45 days exposure) groups...

BACKGROUND: Early exposure to sevoflurane may cause brain tissue degeneration; however, the mechanism involved in this process has not been explored. In this study, we investigated the role of long non-coding RNA small nucleolar RNA host gene 3 (lncRNA SNHG3) in sevoflurane-induced neuronal injury. METHODS: The injury models of HT22 and primary cultures of neurons were constructed using sevoflurane treatment. The WST-8 reduction was detected by CCK-8 assay, the level of inflammatory factors was detected by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), and cell pyroptosis was detected by flow cytometry...