神经干细胞移植治疗老年痴呆

Neural stem cell transplantation for Alzheimer’s disease

BACKGROUND:Neural stem cell transplantation has been used to treat a series of brain injury diseases, such as cerebral palsy, but its effect on Alzheimer’s disease is rarely reported.OBJECTIVE:To observe the effect of neural stem cell transplantation on the behavior and immune regulating system of Alzheimer’s disease rats.  METHODS:Thirty-five Sprague-Dawley rats were enrolled to make a postcerebral incision and given hippocampal injection of amanita phalloides acid to establish rat models of Alzheimer’s disease. Another 10 rats were only given hippocampal injection of normal saline after preparation of postcerebral skin incision as sham operation group. Then 32 successful rat models were randomly divided into two groups (n=16 per group): rats in experimental group were administrated hippocamal injection of 5×109/L allogeneic neural stem cell suspension; those in model group were given no injection. Five-day Morris water maze test was conducted at 4 weeks after transplantation. At 1 week after Morris water maze test, levels of interleukin-1 and interleukin-10 in the cerebral homogenate were detected, as well as pathological changes of brain tissues were observed in the three groups. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION:Compared with the model group, the abilities of cognition and memory were significantly higher in the sham operation group (P < 0.01), and the abilities of spatial learning and memory were significantly higher in the experimental group (P < 0.05, P < 0.01). Levels of interleukin-1 and interleukin-10 in the model group were significantly higher than those in the sham operation group (P < 0.01) but significantly lower than those in the experimental group (P < 0.01). Besides, the number of neurons in the model group was obviously less than that in the experimental and sham operation group. These results indicate that neural stem cell transplantation supplements and protects neurons against Alzheimer's disease in rats, thereby significantly improving the learning and memory ability.