ACTA VETERINARIA ET ZOOTECHNICA SINICA ›› 2018, Vol. 49 ›› Issue (5): 1054-1060.doi: 10.11843/j.issn.0366-6964.2018.05.021

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Effects of Different Isoflurane Anesthesia Time on Neural Apoptosis and Autophagy in the Developing Rat Hippocampus

QIU Zi-hao, HU Xue-yuan, FENG Xiu-jing, ZHAO Yuan, SONG Man-yu, WANG Chao-ran, LIU Tao, FAN Hong-gang*   

  1. College of Veterinary Medicine, Northeast Agricultural University, Harbin 150030, China
  • Received:2017-10-27 Online:2018-05-23 Published:2018-05-23

Abstract:

Studies have shown that isoflurane could cause autotrophy and apoptosis in the developing rat brain. Based on the preliminary experiment, forty 7 day Sprague-Dawley rat pups were selected and divided into control group and groups of 1.5% isoflurane anesthesia for 2, 3, 4 and 6 h randomly. After anesthesia, the rats were euthanized, then hippocampus were collected for TUNEL-staining, LC3-Ⅱ immunohistochemistry and Western blotting, to investigate the level of autophagy and apoptosis. The results showed that with the increasing time exposed to isoflurane, the percent of positive cells were significantly increased at 3 h, the results of LC3-Ⅱ immunohistochemistry showed that the percent of positive cells were increased at 3 and 4 h, but decreased at 6 h; and the expression of Caspase-3 was increased gradually compared with control group, although the expression of Bcl-2 was decreased. However, the expression of Beclin-1 and LC3-Ⅱ/I were increased at the first 4 h with the most expressions at 3 h (P<0.05) and then decreased; In addition, compared with isoflurane anesthesia at 3 and 4 h, the expression amount of Beclin-1 was significantly decreased at 6 h while Caspase-3 significantly increased (P<0.05). These results showed that isoflurane can not only induce extensive apoptosis of hippocampal neurons in young SD rats, but also induce autophagy in hippocampal neurons. And the level of apoptosis gradually increased with the prolongation of anesthetic time, while the level of autophagy increased first and then decreased. Autophagy may play a protective role in the apoptosis of hippocampal neurons induced by isoflurane.

Key words: general anesthesia, isoflurane, autophagy, apoptosis, developing rat

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