The Long-term Effects Of Cognitive Development Induced By Seveflurane Exposure During The Developing Brain

Huge body of evidences demonstrated that exposure to anesthesia affect the hippocampal neurogenesis,synapse plasticity and even thereby generate long term consequent changes of neuro function during the developing brain,and these effects are generally considered to be dose dependent.But evidence also show that juvenile anesthesia does not affect adult cognitive or behavioral development.So with that being said,what are the effects and mechanisms of action of narcotic drugs to date is still unclear.The purpose of this study is to evaluate whether long-term hippocampus-related changes in development of emotion and cognition induced by sevoflurane exposure.Neonatal mice at postnatal day 7 were treated with 3%sevoflurane for 4 hours.The emotion and spatial learning performed by open field and Morris water maze which were assessed in 2 months after anesthetic treatment,the neurogenesis was quantified by dendritic spine density by Golgi-cox staining,the expression of synapse-related proteins was measured respectively at immediately and 2 month later,and the synaptic plasticity evaluated by LTP were also conducted at 2 months old.Finally,we found that sevoflurane exposure during the critical period induces anxiety,hyperactivity,memory retention,NMDA receptor composition changes and neurogenesis,without synaptic plasticity and cognitive behavioral dysfunction consequences.These means inhalation anesthesia,although it will have a certain impact on neuro development,but can’t be sure to be a comprehensive inhibitory effect.Further studies are needed to confirm and define the role of changes in neuronal development induced by anesthesia.