Investigating the therapeutic effects of encapsulated N-butylidenephthalide with F127 polymer on the disease progress of Down’s syndrome mice

• Main Authors: Jyun-Wei Chang, 張㚬瑋
• Other Authors: Hong-Lin Su
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2018
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/pwz58f

碩士 === 國立中興大學 === 生命科學系所 === 107 === Down’s syndrome (DS), caused by the duplication of chromosome 21, is the most common hereditary genetic disease of intellectual disability. Except face and morphological abnormality, DS patients suffer with Alzheimer’s disease (AD)-like mental retardation and dementia at their young age. Our previous evidence indicates that F127-encapsulating can reduce the cytotoxicity of N-butylidenephthalide (Bp), one of the main components of Angelica sinensis. Feeding F127-coated Bp at the dosage of 200 mg/kg for nineteen weeks showed the attenuation of memory/learning disabilities in SAMP8 mice. In this study, we used the mice model of DS to further evaluate the therapeutic effect of F127-Bp (200 mg/kg) on DS-like dementia for five months. We found that F127-Bp treatment significantly enhance the learning performance, determined by the Morris Water Maze and Barnes Maze test. This learning improvement was not caused by the motor advantage, evidenced by the similar scores of Rotarod and grip test between the non-treated and treated DS mice. Immunohistochemistry staining further demonstrated that F127-Bp treatment increased the number of astrocytes in the hippocampus, accompanied with the reduced Aβ content and hyperphosphorylation of Tau protein, the two hallmark of AD cytopathology. These results strongly indicated that F127-Bp compound is a potential drug for attenuating the mental retardation of Down’s syndrome patients.