Cephalosporin against senile dementia
Scientists have successfully tested a well-known antibiotic as a neuroprotector for dementia in rats with accelerated aging
NSU Press Service
The Laboratory of Translational and Clinical Neuroscience, organized by NSU together with the Research Institute of Physiology and Fundamental Medicine and part of the SAE NSU "Neuroscience in Translational Medicine", monitored rats with genetically determined accelerated aging and investigated the effects of a well-known antibiotic (ceftriaxone) on them for the correction of cognitive impairment.
Dementia in the elderly is one of the most urgent problems of modern medicine, and their research is among the priorities within the framework of the WHO Program to Fill Gaps in the Field of Mental Health (mhGAP). The incidence of severe cognitive dysfunctions caused by aging and neurodegenerative diseases has increased dramatically and is due to an increase in the life expectancy of the population. At the same time, questions of the etiology and pathogenesis of senile dementia remain open, and the search for tools and means for their effective correction is actively underway all over the world.
Repositioning of well-known drugs (drug repositioning) is a promising and effective strategy in modern psychopharmacology. The third generation cephalosporin antibiotic ceftriaxone is a broad—spectrum drug that has been actively used exclusively as an antimicrobial agent for many years. Relatively recently, in 2005, it was hypothesized that ceftriaxone may be effective for the treatment of some neurodegenerative diseases.
— Our research team was involved in the study of the effects of ceftriaxone in cognitive impairment on animal models of dementia in the framework of international cooperation with a team led by Professor Y.J. Ho, from Chung Shan Medical University (Taiwan). Priority data were obtained on the ability of ceftriaxone to normalize cognitive deficits in rats within the framework of the Parkinson's disease model, and a number of mechanisms mediating the effects of the drug were studied, — explained the head of the laboratory of experimental models of neurodegenerative Processes of the Research Institute of Physiology and Fundamental Medicine, a leading researcher, candidate of Biological Sciences, senior researcher at the Laboratory of Translational and Clinical Neuroscience Maria Tikhonova.
The results of the work on the effect of ceftriaxone on the severity of age-related cognitive and neuronal deficits were recently published in the international journal Behavioral Brain Research (Tikhonova et al., 2017, Neuroprotective effects of ceftriaxone treatment on cognitive and neuronal deficits in a rat model of accelerated senescence). The study was conducted on an original model of genetically determined accelerated aging in rats.
For the first time, ceftriaxone has been shown to attenuate the severity of cognitive deficits associated with aging, as well as normalize the reduced density of neurons in the CA1 region of the hippocampus, closely involved in the regulation of memory and learning mechanisms, in rats after 5 weeks of treatment with the drug. According to the results of the study, it was suggested that the beneficial effect of ceftriaxone in age-related cognitive disorders is carried out through the activation of mechanisms that ensure the survival of newly formed and mature neurons in the hippocampus. The work is important and promising for understanding the mechanisms and developing effective approaches to neuroprotection in dementia.
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26.06.2017