Homocysteine intracerebroventricular injection induces apoptosis in the Substantia Nigra cells and Parkinson like behavior in rat

Document Type : Original Article

Authors
Amin Ataie 1
Ramin Ataee 2
Zahra Mansoury 3
Mohsen Aghajanpour 1
1 Cellular and Molecular Biology Research Center (CMBRC), Babol University of Medical Sciences, Babol, Iran
2 Pharmaceutical Sciences Research Center, Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences, Sari, Iran
3 Neuroscience research center. Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
Abstract
Parkinson's disease is a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system. The motor symptoms of Parkinson's
disease result from the death of dopamine-generating cells in the substantia nigra, a region of the midbrain; the
cause of this cell death is unknown. Homocysteine (Hcy) is a non-protein amino acid. It is a homologue of the
amino acid cysteine. The elevated levels of homocysteine in plasma have been associated with a number of
disease states. Hcy (2 µmol / µl) was injected intracerebroventricular (i.c.v) in rats, five days later, the locomotor
activity was measured with open field apparatus, Also apoptosis was investigated in substantia nigra cells by
immunohistochemical analysis. Hcy could decrease locomotor activities significantly in rats as well as it could
induce apoptosis in substantia nigra cells. These results suggest that Hcy is a neurotoxic metabolite and may
induce cell death in some nuclei in the brain.
Keywords
Homocysteine
parkinson disease
locomotor activity
substantia nigra
immunohistochemistry