The effect of saffranal on intracerebroventricular strepto- zotocin-induced cognitive deficits in rat

A B S T R A C T Background and Objective: Intracerebroventricular (ICV) injection of streptozotocin (STZ) causes cognitive impairment in rats. The beneficial effect of saffron main component, safranal was investigated on ICV STZ-induced learning, memory, and cognitive impairment in male rats. Materials and Methods: For this purpose, rats were injected with ICV STZ bilaterally, on days 1 and 3 (3 mg/kg). The STZ-injected rats received safranal (60 mg/kg; i.p.) one other day starting one day pre-surgery for three weeks. The learning and memory performance was assessed using passive avoidance paradigm, and for spatial cognition evaluation, Y maze task was used. Results: It was found out that safranal-treated STZ-injected rats show higher correct choices and lower errors in Y maze than vehicle-treated STZ-injected rats. In addition, safranal administration significantly attenuated learning and memory impairment in treated STZ-injected group in passive avoidance test. Conclusion: Therefore, these results demonstrate the effectiveness of safranal in preventing the cognitive deficits caused by ICV STZ in rats and its potential in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease (AD).