EFEITO COMPORTAMENTAL DAS ESTATINAS EM UM MODELO ANIMAL DA DOENÇA DE PARKINSON

Abstract

Currently Parkinson's disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disease, and yet there is no effective therapy to control the progression of the disease, current treatments only relieve symptoms. The aim of this study was to evaluate the neuroprotective ability of statins on dopaminergic neurons from rats injured by the neurotoxin 6-hydroxydopamine (6-OHDA), which was used as an animal model for PD. In order to test this hypothesis, the animals underwent stereotaxic surgery for infusion of 6-OHDA into the medial forebrain bundle in order to cause the death of dopaminergic neurons. Two different methodologies were used in this study regarding dopaminergic injury, 1) bilateral infusions for tests of social recognition, preference for sucrose, forced swimming test and open field, 2) unilateral infusion for test rotational behavior. The animals were treated for 10 days (3 days before surgery and for 7 days after) with vehicle, simvastatin or pravastatin 10 mg/kg. Statins with two different solubility were tested to evaluate if the effect occurs only on the central nervous system or if there is a peripheral effect too. In the social recognition test the animals 6-OHDA treated with statins had a significantly better performance than those of group 6-OHDA+vehicle. In the forced swimming test, animals 6-OHDA treated with statins spent less time immobile compared with animals of the 6-OHDA+vehicle. In the rotational behavior test the number of contralateral rotations in animals 6-OHDA treated with statins was significantly smaller when compared with animals of group 6-OHDA+vehicle. These results suggest that statins may have decreased the death of dopaminergic neurons. To confirm this hypothesis, the Western Blot test was performed for expression of the enzyme tyrosine hydroxylase (TH). It’s still necessary to conduct further tests to confirm the neuroprotective potential of statins.