Costa M S, Botton P H, Mioranzza S, Souza D O, Porciúncula L O
Laboratory of Studies on the Purinergic System, Department of Biochemistry, Health and Basic Sciences Institute, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre/RS, Brazil.
Neuroscience. 2008 Jun 2;153(4):1071-8. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroscience.2008.03.038. Epub 2008 Mar 22.
The beneficial effects of caffeine on cognition are controversial in humans, whereas its benefit in rodents had been well characterized. However, most studies were performed with acute administration of caffeine and the tasks used to evaluate cognition had aversive components. Here, we evaluated adulthood administration of caffeine up to old age on recognition memory in mice using the object recognition task (ORT) and on brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BNDF) and tyrosine kinase receptor (TrkB) immunocontent in the hippocampus. Adult mice (6 months old) received either drinking water or caffeine (1 mg/mL) during 12 months. At 18 months of age both groups were tested for ORT. Our results showed that aged mice exhibited lower performance in the recognition memory compared with adults (6 months old). Furthermore, caffeine-treated mice showed similar performance to adult mice in the ORT and an improvement compared with their age-matched control mice. Caffeine also counteracted the age-related increase in BDNF and TrkB immunocontent. Our results corroborate with other studies and reinforce that caffeine consumed in adulthood may prevent recognition memory decline with aging. This preventive effect may involve a decrease in the hippocampal BDNF and TrkB immunocontent.
咖啡因对人类认知的有益影响存在争议，而其对啮齿动物的益处已得到充分表征。然而，大多数研究是通过急性给予咖啡因进行的，且用于评估认知的任务具有厌恶成分。在此，我们使用物体识别任务（ORT）评估了成年期直至老年给予咖啡因对小鼠识别记忆的影响，以及对海马体中脑源性神经营养因子（BDNF）和酪氨酸激酶受体（TrkB）免疫含量的影响。成年小鼠（6个月大）在12个月期间饮用普通水或含咖啡因的水（1毫克/毫升）。在18个月大时，对两组小鼠进行ORT测试。我们的结果表明，与成年小鼠（6个月大）相比，老年小鼠在识别记忆方面表现较差。此外，咖啡因处理组小鼠在ORT中的表现与成年小鼠相似，且与其年龄匹配的对照小鼠相比有所改善。咖啡因还抵消了与年龄相关的BDNF和TrkB免疫含量的增加。我们的结果与其他研究一致，并进一步证明成年期摄入咖啡因可能预防随着年龄增长而出现的识别记忆衰退。这种预防作用可能涉及海马体中BDNF和TrkB免疫含量的降低。
