Tongmaiyizhi Capsule Treatment Of Vascular Dementia In Clinical Research And The Apoptosis Of Hippocampal Neurons

Vascular dementia (VD) is a major complication of the brain vascular disease, it will induce the syndrome of dementia. Its main character is the obstacle of calculate, estimation, cognition, pneuma and action. It is one of the common diseases in the elders. The senile people's physical and psychological health and the quality of living are seriously damaged. Now the research on VD has been a popular subject around the world.Vascular dementia belongs to senile dementia in TCM, which is characterized by deficiency in origin, blood stasis, and excess in superficiality in terms of its pathological result. "Tong Mai Yi Zhi" capsule is an effective drug, which is summarized by my teacher: professor Xiaoping Yan through treating VD for many years. It has the function of invigorating the liver to benefit the kidney , eliminating phlegm and blood and supplementing intelligence to enlivening spirit . It was proved to be a highly effective and safe formula after its long clinical use. In order to approach on mechanism , this paper expounds the research by means of research into clinical and experimental studies.In clinical studies , we diagnosed VD by the standard of DSM-Ⅳ, determined the degree by MMSE and BBS, distinguish from the other diseases by HIS. We treated 40 patients which were low-grade and middle-grade in VD by "Tong Mai Yi Zhi" capsule, and compared with Hydergine for 20 patients. After all the patients were treated for 2 courses(60 days), we examined the estimation of MMSE and BBS, fibrinolytic system, superoxide dismutase (SOD), malondialdehyde (MDA), microelement . As a result, the "Tong Mai Yi Zhi" capsule can strengthen the patients' aptitude and society living's abilities, adjust fibrinolytic system and microelement, increase the content of SOD, clean the free radical.In experimental studies, we made the model of VD mice by repeated clamping both sides of carotid artery and injecting sodium nitroprusside into abdominal cavity. The test animals were randomly divided into 4 groups : fake operation group, pathological model group, "Tong Mai Yi Zhi" capsule group, control (Hydergine) group. We observed the neurons of hippocampus under the light microscope and the electron microscope, then we used the method of Terminal Deoxynucleotidyl Transferase-mediated dUTP-Nick End-labeling (TUNEL) to label the apoptosis cells and determined the apoptosis index (AI). The results suggest that "Tong Mai Yi Zhi" capsule can alleviate the ischemia-reperfusion damage, protect the hippocampal neurons, inhibit neuronal apoptosis induced by ischemia-reperfusion.