Effects of HuannaoYicong Decoction on the oxidative stress and anti-aging in aging rats with cognitive impairment

Objective To observe effects of HuannaoYicong Decoction(HY) on ethology,pathological morphology,oxidative stress and anti-aging in order to initially explore its effect mechanism and action process.Methods Sixty 18 to 20-month-oldSprague-Dawley aging rats,according to results of Morris water maze and body mass,were selected.By stratified randomized method,rats were divided into anaging modelgroup,a positive controlmedicine group(donepezil hydrochloride,0.49 mg/kg),a small-dose of HY granulegroup(3.78 g/Kg),moderate-dose of HYgranulegroup(7.56 g/Kg),and a large-dose of HYgranulegroup(18.90 g/Kg).In addition,10 4-month-old youth rats were taken as youth normal group.Intragastric administration of distilled water was applied in the aging normal group,aging model group and youth group for continuous 14 weeks.After the administration,Morris water maze test was performed to measure rats' learning-memory ability.With intraperitoneal anesthesia,blood was collected from abdominal aorta;brain tissue(hippocampus)homogenate of 5 rats were randomly selected to measure oxidativestress index,such asSOD,MDA,CAT,T-AOC,GSH.Other 5 rats' brain tissues were selected and fixed by 10 % neutral formaldehyde solutionto observe morphological and amyloid deposition changes of hippocampal tissue CA1 region with HE andCongo red staining.Results Compared with aging model group,the large-dose of HY granule group could significantly increase rats' running time and distancein the fourth quadrant(P 0.05,P 0.01).Compared with hippocampus area in rats with cognitive impairment,lesion severity was obviously relieved after intervention of HY decoction with small,moderate and large dose.Microscopicallythe number of β-amyloid protein deposition was obviouslydecreasedwith Congo red staining.Compared with model group,SOD activity was improved and MDA content was decreased in serum and hippocampus tissue in the positive control medicine group,small-dose group,moderate-dose group and large-dose group.The small-dose group and large-dose group could significantly improveSOD and GSH activity in serum and hippocampus tissue and lowerβ-AP in hippocampus tissue.There was a rising trend of GSH-PX activity in serum and hippocampus tissuein middle-dose group and large-dose group,which had no statistical significance.Conclusion The learning-memory ability and space recognition capability is impaired in aging rats.HY could improve aging alzheimer diseaserats' learning-memory ability,protect hippocampus formation in brain tissue,increase antioxidant capacity and T-AOC activity in serum and tissue,and decreaseβ-amyloid protein content.