Changes of NOS activity and nNOS expression in hippocampus of vascular dementia mice

    WANG Peng, LI Jiª²Sheng

    1Department of Anatomy, School of Basic Medicine, 2Institute of Military Preventive Medicine, School of Health Service, Medical College of Chinese People¬ðs Police Force, Tianjin 300162, China

    ¡¾Abstract¡¿ AIM: To observe the activity changes of nitric oxide synthase (NOS) and the expression level of neuronal nitric oxide synthase (nNOS) in the hippocampus of vascular dementia (VD) mice and to investigate the mechanism underlying VD. METHODS: Models of VD mice were made. NADPHª²d histochemistry and nNOS immunohistochemistry were used to investigate the changes of NOS in different groups and Yª²maze test was conducted to observe the changes of their learning and memory abilities. RESULTS: Compared with those of the control group, the learning and memory abilities of the VD group significantly decreased (P<0.01) and the number of NOS positive neurons and nNOS positive neurons in the hippocampus significantly increased (P<0.05). CONCLUSION: VD is probably related to the increase of the numbers of NOS positive neurons and nNOS positive neurons in the hippocampus. ......