Empirical Study Of Neuroprotective Effect And Mechanism Of Edaravon On Neonatal Rat Bacterial Meningitis

Objective To investigate the neuroprotective effect of antioxidantedaraovon on neonatal rat bacterial meningitis(BM) and the mechanisms.Methods 162 neonatal Sprague-Dawley rats on postnatal day 11 wererandomly divided into 6 groups, meningitis group, meningitis control group,edaravon treatment group, edaravon+ceftriaxone treatment group, ceftriaxonetreatment group and normal saline control group(prepared by intracisternalinjection of group B StreptococcusⅢ(GBSⅢ) suspension or normal saline).Normal saline, edaravon, edaravon+ceftriaxone or ceftriaxone were usedintraperitoneally to treat animals. Rats in each group were evaluated by Lofflerneurobehavioral score system; Nissle staining was used to study the brain tissuepathology; Dry wet method was used in water content determination; ELISAtechnique was used to evaluate TNF-αand IL-1βcontent in brain tissue; andimmunohistochemical technique was applied to determine p-p38MAPKexpression.Results The neurobehavioral scores in meningitis group, meningitiscontrol group, edaravon group, edaravon + ceftriaxone group, ceftriaxone groupand normal saline control group were 2.00±0.63, 5.00±0.00, 2.33±0.52,4.83±0.41, 3.67±0.52, 1.83±0.75, the brain water content (%) were84.17±1.19,77.57±1.36, 81.21±1.20, 78.51±1.26, 80.16±1.41, 82.95±0.96, the content(pg/ml) of TNF-αin brain tissue at 12h were 697.92±117.26, 25.13±1.19,220.98±32.90, 24.80±0.23, 141.15±30.86, 662.40±77.98, the content (pg/ml) ofIL-Iβin brain tissue at 6h were 642.96±115.40, 25.86±0.33, 89.61±9.01,25.76±0.15, 65.49±10.23, 643.33±116.20, the gray scales were 114.68±2.02,138.25±1.02, 135.69±1.88, 138.78±0.10, 125.16±0.89, 117.92±0.28 respectively.Compared with naomal saline control group, treatment groups improved the above index, edaravon+ceftriaxone was the most effective one, the differenceswere significantly(P＜0.05). Brain nissle staining indicated that ceftriaxone and/or edaravon both can improved neuron injury in the cortex in BM, in whichedaravon+ceftriaxone was the most effective one.Conclusions Edaravon may protect the neonatal brain from GBSⅢBM byreducing the expression of TNF-αand IL-1β, improving the neurobehavioralscore and brain damage. Combine edaravon with ceftriaxone were more effective.The mechanism is related to supress p-p38MAPK signal transmission.