Effect of transplantation of neural stem cells on the praxiology of rats with vascular dementia

AIM:To study the praxiological changes of rats with vascular dementia(VD) after transplantation of neural stem cells(NSCs) into hippocampus. METHODS:The experiment was conducted in the Center for Experimental Animals,Fuzhou General Hospital from September 2002 to December 2003.①Cells which had ability to form clones were isolated from spinal cord of neonatal rats by using serum free cell culture and single cell clone test.The clones were passaged continuously in order to acquire a large number of NSCs.②The VD model was established by permanent deligation of bilateral common carotid arteries in rats.Abilities to learning and memory of rats were tested by using the localization sailing test with Morris water maze after 30 day breeding.③Meanwhile,the cultured cells were labeled with and transplanted into hippocampus of adult VD rats.After eight week breeding,abilities to space learning and memory of rats were tested by using the Morris water maze. RESULTS:After 8 week transplantation of NSCs,significant differences in the latency were found between the sham operation group[(25.61±3.21) seconds] and VD group[(53.42±8.26) seconds](F=7.82,P 0.01),as well as between transplantation group[(36.93±6.24) seconds] and VD group(F=8.23,P 0.01),but there was no significant difference between the transplantation group and the sham operation group(F=5.77,P 0.05).The average lingering time at platform quadrant of VD group,transplantation group and sham operation group was (8.21±2.90) s,(11.82±3.08) s,(13.48±3.35) s respectively,accordingly,it was significantly different between VD group and transplantation group(F=9.76,P 0.01),as well as between VD group and sham operation grjoup(F=10.21,P 0.01),but in insignificantly different between sham operation group and transplantation group(F=5.79,P 0.05). CONCLUSION:Transplantation of NSCs into the hippocampus can improve the abilities to space learning and memory of VD rats.