Abstract
Background:
A woman’s risk of a stroke increases exponentially following the onset of menopause, andpost-stroke cognitive decline is a significant consequence of stroke survivors. Our earlier study demonstrated that physical exercise (PE) reduced post-stroke brain injury and improved cognitive functions in male rats. The focus of our study is on the improvement of post-stroke cognitive function in female rats.
Methods:
Reproductively senescent Sprague-Dawley female rats were exposed to transient middle cerebral artery occlusion (tMCAO; 90 min) and randomly assigned to either PE or sham-PE groups. After 3-5 days, rats underwent sham-PE (0m/min speed) or PE (15m/min speed) for 30 mins either every day (continuous) or alternate day for five times on treadmill. The rats that underwent the alternate day paradigm were treated with ER-β agonist (DPN; 1mg/kg) or vehicle-DMSO immediately following PE/sham-PE sessions to determine the synergistic effect. Twenty-one days after the last PE/sham-PE, rats were tested for hippocampal-dependent contextual fear conditioning and freeze time was measured. Rat brains were processed for histology and infarct area was measured with MCID software. From a separate cohort of rat subjected to PE or sham-PE, brain tissue was harvested for various biochemical assays and mitochondrial enzyme activity measurements.
Results:
Post-tMCAO continuous PE did not reduce ischemic damage. However, alternate PE regimen with or without ER-β agonist reduced infract volume by 20% (p < 0.05) and 23% (p < 0.05), respectively as compared to no-PE. Similarly, alternate PE showed increased freezing on the second day of fear conditioning by 15% (p < 0.05), indicating improved spatial memory. Individual mitochondrial complex I, II, III and IV enzyme activity measurements demonstrated significant improvement in complex III-IV enzyme activities in the alternate PE treated group as compared to sham-PE.
Conclusion:
An alternate day PE paradigm and ER-β activation improves post-stroke mitochondrial enzyme activities and cognition in reproductively senescent female rats. Future studies delineating underlying mechanism could help identify therapies to prevent/reduce cognitive decline in menopausal female stroke patients.