Eicosapentaenoic acid pre-treatment reduces biochemical changes induced in total brain and myelin of weanling Wistar rats by cuprizone feeding.
Recently, we investigated the effects of eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), a fatty acid which modulates immune response and stimulates myelin gene expression, in an established model of multiple sclerosis (MS): the experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) induced in Dark Agouti rats. As scientific evidences and our previous studies have suggested that EPA could directly affect oligodendrocytes, we have now evaluated the effects of EPA in the non-immune mediate MS model characterized by selective oligodendrocytes damage induced by cuprizone (CPZ). We found that feeding weanling rats diets containing 0.6% CPZ for 2 weeks induced variation of whole brain and myelin biochemical composition representative of a severe myelin damage. We thus administered daily and by gavage EPA or PBS to 2-day old rats up to 21 days. Afterwards, rats were fed CPZ diet for 9 days. The results show that compared to PBS/CPZ fed rats, the whole brain cerebroside content in EPA pre-treated rats was statistically increased as well as there was an overall trend of increase of all other biochemical components.
['Di Biase|A|A|', 'Salvati|S|S|', 'Di Benedetto|R|R|', 'Attorri|L|L|', 'Martinelli|A|A|', 'Malchiodi|F|F|']
D000818:Animals D001921:Brain D002478:Cells, Cultured D002554:Cerebrosides D003471:Cuprizone D004353:Drug Evaluation, Preclinical D015118:Eicosapentaenoic Acid D004681:Encephalomyelitis, Autoimmune, Experimental D004912:Erythrocytes D005227:Fatty Acids D018836:Inflammation Mediators D009186:Myelin Sheath D018696:Neuroprotective Agents D009836:Oligodendroglia D051381:Rats D017208:Rats, Wistar D014886:Weaning
Eicosapentaenoic acid Myelin Rat Cuprizone