Effect of human serum albumin on cognitive function after experimental subarachnoid hemorrhage

doi:10.3969/j.issn.1009-0126.2017.06.022

Abstract：Objective To investigate whether human serum albumin (ALB) can improve long-term cognitive function in SAH rats.Methods Eighty adult male SD rats weighing 270-320 g were randomly divided into sham operation group and normal saline,low ALB dose (0.63 g/kg) and high ALB dose (1.25 g/kg) treatment groups (20 in each group).Endovascular perforation model was used to induce SAH.Working and spatial memory of SAH rats were evaluated by novel object recognition (NOR) and Morris water maze (MWM) respectively.Spine density and synapserelated proteins levels were measured by immunoblotting with Golgi staining.Results The shortterm and long-term working memory were significantly better in both low and high ALB dose treatment groups (P=0.001).Compared with normal saline treatment group,the latency and swimming distance were significantly shorter (P=0.015,P=0.019;P=0.015,P=0.017),while the frequency to cross quadrant was significantly higher (P=0.018,P=0.027) in low and high ALB dose treatment groups.The spine density was significantly higher in hippocampal area in low dose treatment group (P=0.025),while both cortical and hippocampal spine densities were significantly higher in high dose group than in saline group (P=0.026,P=0.016).The expression levels of synapse-related proteins were significantly higher in both low and high ALB dose treatment groups.Conclusion ALB can significantly improve cognitive functions in SAH rats by upregulating spine density and synapse-related proteins levels.