Baicalin influences the dendritic morphology of newborn neurons in the hippocampus of chronically stressed rats

Xinghua Jiang; Junmei Xu; Dingquan Zou; Lin Yang; Yaping Wang

doi:10.3969/j.issn.1673-5374.2013.06.002

Baicalin influences the dendritic morphology of newborn neurons in the hippocampus of chronically stressed rats

Neural Regen Res. 2013 Feb 25;8(6):496-505. doi: 10.3969/j.issn.1673-5374.2013.06.002.

Authors

Xinghua Jiang¹, Junmei Xu¹, Dingquan Zou¹, Lin Yang¹, Yaping Wang¹

Affiliation

¹ Department of Anesthesiology, the Second Xiangya Hospital of Central South University, Changsha 410011, Hunan Province, China.

PMID: 25206692
PMCID: PMC4146053
DOI: 10.3969/j.issn.1673-5374.2013.06.002

Abstract

Chronic stress models, established in adult Sprague-Dawley rats through a 14-day subcutaneous injection of 40 mg/kg corticosterone, once per day, were given a daily oral feeding of 50 mg/kg baicalin. The study was an attempt to observe the effect of baicalin on neurogenesis in chronically stressed rats. Results showed that subcutaneous injection of corticosterone significantly decreased the total number of doublecortin-positive neurons in the hippocampus. The reduced cell number caused by corticosterone was mainly due to the decrease of class II doublecortin-positive neurons, but the class I doublecortin-positive neurons were unaffected. Baicalin treatment increased the number of both class I and class II doublecortin-positive neurons. In addition, doublecortin-positive neurons showed less complexity in dendritic morphology after corticosterone injection, and this change was totally reversed by baicalin treatment. These findings suggest that baicalin exhibits a beneficial effect on adult neurogenesis.

Keywords: baicalin; cognition; dendrites; doublecortin; grants-supported paper; hippocampus; mood regulation; neural regeneration; neurodegenerative disease; neurogenesis; neurons; neuroregeneration; photographs-containing paper; stress; traditional Chinese medicine.