Effect of Taurine on the Expression of Nestin in Neural Stem Cell after Focal Cerebral Ischemia in Rats

[Objective] To study the influence of taurine on the expression of Nestin in neural stem cells after focal cerebral ischemia in rats and to explore the mechanism of taurine in treating ischemic brain injury.[Methods]The model of middle cerebral artery occlusion was made by using opening ranium hot coagulation in 80 rats,who were divided randomly into normal group,sham operate group,odel group and taurine group.Taurine was administrated once daily by i.p.in taurine group,and immunohistochemistry method was used to observe the number of Nestin positive cells on the 3rd,7th,14th and 21st days after ischemia.[Results]There were Nestin positive cells in the cortex,hippocampal dentate gyrus(DG)and striatum at different time points after cerebral ischemia,and the number of Nestin positive cells in various brain regions was increased significantly on the 7th day(P0.05).It was also found that the number of Nestin positive cells in taurine group was significantly more than that in the model group at different time points(P0.05).[Conclusion] Taurine can increase the number of Nestin positive cells in some brain regions after focal cerebral ischemia,which might be one of the important mechanisms of taurine in treating ischemic brain injury.