Abstract
Postoperative cognitive dysfunction (POCD) is a kind of serious postoperative complication in surgery with general anesthesia and it may affect patients' normal lives. Activated microglia are thought to be one of the key factors in the regulation of POCD process. Once activated, resident microglia change their phenotype and secrete kinds of cytokines to regulate inflammatory response in tissues. Among these secretory factors, brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) is considered to be able to inhibit inflammation response and protect nervous system. Therefore, the enhancement of BDNF expression derived from resident microglia is suggested to be potential treatment for POCD. In our study, we focused on the role of C8-ceramide (a kind of interventional drug) and assessed its regulatory effect on improving the expression of BDNF secreted from microglia to treat POCD. According to the results of our study, we observed that C8-ceramide stimulated primary microglia to up-regulate the expression of BDNF mRNA after being treated with lipopolysaccharide (LPS) in vitro. We proved that C8-ceramide had ability to effectively improve POCD of mice after being accepted carotid artery exposure and their abnormal behavior recovered better than that of mice from the surgery group. Furthermore, we also demonstrated that C8-ceramide enhanced the cognitive function of mice via the PKCδ/NF-κB signaling pathway. In general, our study has confirmed a potential molecular mechanism that led to the occurrence of POCD caused by surgery and provided a new clinical strategy to treat POCD.