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Quercetin promotes learning and memory performance concomitantly with neural stem/progenitor cell proliferation and neurogenesis in the adult rat dentate gyrus
Author(s) -
Karimipour Mohammad,
Rahbarghazi Reza,
Tayefi Hamid,
Shimia Mohammad,
Ghanadian Mustafa,
Mahmoudi Javad,
Bagheri Hesam Saghaei
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
international journal of developmental neuroscience
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.761
H-Index - 88
eISSN - 1873-474X
pISSN - 0736-5748
DOI - 10.1016/j.ijdevneu.2019.02.005
Subject(s) - neurogenesis , dentate gyrus , neural stem cell , morris water navigation task , hippocampus , progenitor cell , amyloid beta , neuroscience , stem cell , medicine , biology , microbiology and biotechnology , disease
The decline in neurogenesis is a very critical problem in Alzheimer disease. Different biological activities have been reported for medicinal application of quercetin. Herein, we investigated the neurogenesis potential of quercetin in a rat model of Alzheimer's disease induced by amyloid‐beta injection. Rats were randomly divided into Control, Alzheimer + Saline and Alzheimer + Quercetin groups. Following the administration of Amyloid‐beta, rats in the Alzheimer + Quercetin group received 40 mg/kg/day quercetin orally for one month. Our data demonstrated amyloid‐β injection could impair learning and memory processing in rats indicated by passive avoidance test evaluation. We noted that one‐month quercetin treatment alleviated the detrimental effects of amyloid‐β on spatial learning and memory parameters using Morris water maze analysis. Quercetin was found to increase the number of proliferating neural stem/progenitor cells. Notably, quercetin increased the number of DCX‐expressing cells, indicating the active dynamic growth of neural progenitor cells in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus. We further observed that the quercetin improved the number of BrdU/NeuN positive cells contributed to enhanced adult neurogenesis. Based on our results, quercetin had the potential to promote the expression of BDNF , NGF , CREB , and EGR ‐1 genes involved in regulating neurogenesis. These data suggest that quercetin can play a valuable role in alleviating Alzheimer's disease symptoms by enhancing adult neurogenesis mechanism.