Efficacy of a combination of taurine and stenosis removing on cognitive impairment induced by carotid artery stenosis in rats.

OBJECTIVE We assessed the protective effect on a carotid artery stenosis rat model with using a combination of taurine and stenosis treatment. Rats were randomly divided into five groups: Group 1 (sham), Group 2 (model), Group 3 (stenosis removing), Group 4 (taurine), and Group 5 (combination). MATERIALS AND METHODS The carotid artery stenosis model was created by ligating the common carotid artery along with various gauges of needle and then removing the needle. The cognitive performance was analyzed using P300 latency and escape latency in the Morris water maze (MWM) task. The levels of oxidative products malondialdehyde (MDA), inflammatory factors interleukin (IL-1β) and tumor necrosis factor (TNF-α), the activities of anti-oxidative enzymes superoxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase (CAT) were determined using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) kits, respectively. RESULTS The results revealed that the cognitive impairment can be reduced by stenosis removing and taurine, combining the administration of stenosis removing and taurine had a significant effect on the recovery of cognitive function. CONCLUSIONS A further study showed that, the protection of cognitive function is related to inhibition of oxidative stress and suppression of inflammatory response.