A RODENT MODEL OF CEREBRAL VASCULAR DEMENTIA AND DRUG ACTION

There have reports suggested that cerebral blood flow (CBF) has decreased in patients with both senile dementia of the Alzheimer's type and multi-infarct dementia, which are characterized by marked cognitive impairments. In addition, recent studies have demonstrated that decrease of CBF precedes the onset of multi-infarct dementia. These findings further suggest that chronic reduction of CBF may play an important role in the formation and progression of cerebral vascular dementia. Although transient cerebral ischemia, based upon vascular “reperfusion”, is apparently not paralleling the clinical condition, the transient cerebral ischemia model is one of the major methods investigated and the other is the cerebral embolism operation. Cognitive impairment and neuronal damages have been fully studied using these transient and/or embolic ischemia models. There are, however, few investigations focused the attention on the influence of chronic decrease of CBF on cognitive processes. In the present study, we have chosen a chronic ischemic model which is produced by permanent occlusion of bilateral common carotid arteries (2VO) in rats to investigate the neuronal damage and cognitive deficits through radial maze performance. We investigated furtherly the effects of tetramethylpyrazine (TMP), a constituent isolated from Ligusticum Chuanxiong on such a model.