Authors: Feng Wang Haixing Zhong Xuying Li Ye Peng Renee Kinden Wei Liang Xin Li Ming Shi Lixin Liu Qiang Wang Lize Xiong
Publish Date: 2014/01/05
Volume: 50, Issue: 2, Pages: 305-313
Abstract
Electroacupuncture EA has demonstrated therapeutic potential for the treatment of Alzheimers disease AD A previous study reported that Nmyc downstreamregulated gene 2 NDRG2 was upregulated in the brain of patients with AD In the present study we investigated the effects of repeated EA administration on reference memory impairment and the role of NDRG2 in an amyloid precursor protein APP/presenilin1 PS1 double transgenic mouse model Agematched wildtype and transgenic mice were treated with EA once per day for 30 min for 4 weeks four courses of 5 days EA administration and 2 days rest beginning at 10 months of age At seven and ten postnatal months of age and following a 4week EA treatment regime mice received training in the Morris water maze MWM and a probe test Brain tissue was analyzed via Western blot and doublelabel immunofluorescence Beginning at 7 months of age APP/PS1 mice began to exhibit deficits in reference memory in the MWM test an impairment associated with upregulation of glial fibrillary acidic protein GFAP and NDRG2 Four weeks of EA administration significantly ameliorated cognitive impairments and suppressed GFAP and NDRG2 upregulation In conclusion our findings demonstrated that EA administration can alleviate reference memory deficits and suppress NDRG2 upregulation in an AD transgenic mouse model This study provides supportive evidence for EA as an effective therapeutic intervention for AD as well as NDRG2 as a novel target for AD treatmentThis work was supported by research grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China No 81102631 81000813 the Changjiang Scholar and Innovative Research Team in University Grant 2010 CXTD01and the Major Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China No 30930091
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