RESEARCH ARTICLE
A Study on the Animal Model for Dementia Induced by Scopolamine
Eun-Jung Yoon1 , Yunseo Choi1 , Dongsun Park1*
1Korea National University of Education
Correspondence to dvmdpark@knue.ac.kr
Brain, Digital, & Learning. Volume 12, Number 1, 131–142, March 2022. https://doi.org/10.31216/BDL.20220009
Received on February 28, 2022, Revised on March 6, 2022, Accepted on March 7, 2022, Published on March 31, 2022.
Copyright © 2022. Institute of Brain based Education, Korea National University of Education This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
This study aimed to determine dose of scopolamine to induce cognitive and memory dysfunction in rat. Six-week-old male rats (n=20) were randomly divided four groups. Scopolamine bromide (0, 0.5, 1.0 and 2.0 mg/kg) was intraperitoneally injected for 7 days. From 4-7 days after injection, the rats were performed memory test by water maze and passive avoidance test. On the 8th day, the rats were sacrificed, then acetylcholinesterase (AChE) activity, cholinergic proteins and inflammatory mediators were analyzed from their brain tissue. In the memory test and AChE activity, the group of scopolamine treatment (0.5 mg/kg) showed no significant difference compared to the control group (0 mg/kg). But, they showed significant differences compared to the control group in expression of choline transporter, choline acetyltransferase, and vesicular acetylcholine transporter protein and nuclear factor kappa B, tumor necrosis factor-α, interLeukin-6, inducible nitric oxide synthase, and cyclooxygenase2 mRNA. Also, the groups of scopolamine treatment (1.0 and 2.0 mg/kg) showed significant differences compared to the control group in memory test, AChE activity, expression of cholinergic proteins and inflammatory mediators mRNA. Therefore, it was suggested that 1.0 mg/kg of scopolamine is adequate dose to induce cognitive and memory dysfunction in rats.
Keywords
AChE activity, cholinergic system, dementia, inflammation, memory deficit, scopolamine dose