A mid-life vitamin A supplementation prevents age-related spatial memory deficits and hippocampal neurogenesis alterations through CRABP-I.

Autor: Katia Touyarot, Damien Bonhomme, Pascale Roux, Serge Alfos, Pauline Lafenêtre, Emmanuel Richard, Paul Higueret, Véronique Pallet
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2013
Předmět:
Zdroj: PLoS ONE, Vol 8, Iss 8, p e72101 (2013)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 1932-6203
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0072101
Popis: Age-related memory decline including spatial reference memory is considered to begin at middle-age and coincides with reduced adult hippocampal neurogenesis. Moreover, a dysfunction of vitamin A hippocampal signalling pathway has been involved in the appearance of age-related memory deficits but also in adult hippocampal neurogenesis alterations. The present study aims at testing the hypothesis that a mid-life vitamin A supplementation would be a successful strategy to prevent age-related memory deficits. Thus, middle-aged Wistar rats were submitted to a vitamin A enriched diet and were tested 4 months later in a spatial memory task. In order to better understand the potential mechanisms mediating the effects of vitamin A supplementation on hippocampal functions, we studied different aspects of hippocampal adult neurogenesis and evaluated hippocampal CRABP-I expression, known to modulate differentiation processes. Here, we show that vitamin A supplementation from middle-age enhances spatial memory and improves the dendritic arborisation of newborn immature neurons probably resulting in a better survival and neuronal differentiation in aged rats. Moreover, our results suggest that hippocampal CRABP-I expression which controls the intracellular availability of retinoic acid (RA), may be an important regulator of neuronal differentiation processes in the aged hippocampus. Thus, vitamin A supplementation from middle-age could be a good strategy to maintain hippocampal plasticity and functions.
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