| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立陽明大學 === 醫學工程研究所 === 95 === Abstract
Aim: The aim of this study was to determine whether Chinese herbal ingredients ferulic acid (FA) and tetramethylpyrazine (TMP) can act as neuroprotective agents to retinal ischemia.
Introduction: Retina ischemia is thought to play an important role in glaucomatous optic neuropathy, diabetic retinopathy, and some other retinal diseases. Previous researches found that free radicals increase during the early stage of reperfusion after ischemia. Ferulic acid and tetramethylpyrazine have been reported to have the abilities to reduce the free radical during the ischemia/reperfusion process. Thus these two agents are selected to be used in this study for the ischemia/reperfusion responses in rats as potential neuroprotective agent for further used.
Method: Forty wistar rats are used in this study. Dosages of neuroprotective agents of ferulic acid are 500 pmole and 100 pmole respectively, and 500 pmole for tetramethylpyrazine are applied to observe the efficacies for the ischemia/reperfusion protection. Electroretinogram (ERG), hisochemistry, and RT-PCR are used as evaluative tools for the protective mechanism.
Results & Discussion: The results indicated that a 60-minute of retinal ischemia followed by reperfusion could cause retinal damages which were characterized by decline in electroretinographic b-wave amplitude (reduce 86.24±11.15%), an increase in hydroxyl radical formation, and a reduction in choline acetyltransferase (amacrine cell marker) immunoreativity in the inner retina. The level of Thy-1 (RGC marker) mRNA was reduced (reduce 85.02±9.76%). This investigation reveals whether these changes will be blunted while FA or TMP was applied 1 hour before ischemia. However the b-wave ratio only reduced 34.07±11.15% and the Thy-1 gene performance dropped 44.25±23.00% when animals treated by 500 pmole ferulic acid. For the other dosage of these protective agents, no apparent changes compared to those of control groups were observed
Conclusion: This study might support a possible neuroprotective role for ferulic acid (500 pmole) in retina ischemia/reperfusion injury.
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