Abstract

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia has become one of the most severe progressive socio-economical and medical burdens facing countries all over the world. The drugs are currently available just able to delay the symptom progression of disease. This study try to evaluate protein profile of the effects of aqueous extract of lavender (Lavandula angustifolia) on spatial performance of AD rats. Male Wistar rats were first divided into control and AD groups. Rat model of AD was established by intracerebroventricular injection of 10 mg Ab 1-42 20 d prior to administration of the lavender extract. Rats in both groups (control (CO) and Alzheimeric A (ALZ) rats that did not receive the herbal extract) were then introduced to task learning in Morris water maze. After the first stage of spatial learning, control (CE200) and AD (AE200) animals received 200 mg/kg of the lavender extract. Hippocampus tissues of four groups are separated and protein profile was determined by 2DE. By using progenesis same spot software totally 950 spots are detected in 4 gel groups. The CO and ALZ displayed different performance in learning the spatial task. 111 proteins just express in CO group. This is illustrated that inducing of Alzheimer could suppress expression of 111 proteins while it can express 67 new proteins. The lavender treated animals in both control and Alzheimer groups demonstrated a tendency of better function in memory consolidation. Progressive Effect of lavender extract on spatial memory and maze learning task can be clear by finding difference gene expression in both ALZ and AE200 groups. 49 protein spots were observed in ALZ but not in AE200, in contrary, 26 proteins were only observed in AE200 but not in ALZ group. Comparison between CO and CE200 groups show that CE200 spent less time locating the hidden platform. This positive influence maybe refers to present 80 new proteins that expressed and 104 protein that suppressed in CE200. Direct effect of lavender on AD rats refer to 16 spots newly expressed and 36 spot that suppressed. These findings can disclose that efficiency of lavender on improving memory and learning in normal and alzheimric brain related to suppression and expression of some principal proteins. Applying more proteomics techniques to better understanding of protein changes at the system level can lead to the development of new drug treatments for dementia.

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