Curcumin ameliorates ischemic stroke injury in rats by protecting the integrity of the blood-brain barrier

xlomafota13 shared this article with you from Inoreader Curcumin ameliorates ischemic stroke injury in rats by protecting the integrity of the blood-brain barrier Via Experimental and therapeutic medicine Exp Ther Med. 2021 Jul;22(1):783. doi: 10.3892/etm.2021.10215. Epub 2021 May 19. ABSTRACT The blood-brain barrier (BBB) is critical for proper cerebral homeostasis and its dysfunction during ischemic stroke can result in significant neurological injury. The major goal of the present study was to identify whether curcumin pretreatment possessed protective effects on BBB integrity during the 24 h of acute ischemic brain injury. To investigate the protective effects of curcumin, male Sprague-Dawley rats were divided into multiple groups, including sham, middle cerebral artery occlusion/reperfusion (MCAO/R) vehicle and curcumin pretreated MCAO/R groups. The effects of curcumin were measured by analyzing neurological deficits, infarct size, BBB permeability and expression levels of permeability-related proteins in the brain. It was found that curcumin pretreatment significantly improved neurological scores, decreased infarct size, and prote cted synaptic remodeling of hippocampal neurons and upregulated the protein expression level of tight junction proteins, ZO-1, occludin and claudin-5 in ischemic rat brains. Furthermore, curcumin pretreatment before stroke was shown to downregulate the phosphorylation of NF-κB and MMP-9, which are central mediators of inflammation. The results from the present study indicated that curcumin pretreatment ameliorated ischemic stroke injury by protecting BBB integrity and synaptic remodeling, as well as inhibiting inflammatory responses. PMID:34055082 | PMC:PMC8145684 | DOI:10.3892/etm.2021.10215 View on the web Inoreader. Take back control of your news feed. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.