Effect of taurine in combination with electroacupuncture on neuronal damage following transient focal cerebral ischemia in rats

Abstract

The present study was to investigate whether taurine is beneficial to the neuroprotective effects of electroacupuncture (EA) on rat cerebral ischemia induced by transient Middle Cerebral Artery Occlusion (MCAO). Histological change and DNA damage degree were detected by H&E staining and TUNEL (terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase-mediated dUTP nick end labeling) method. Taurine and EA combination group could significantly decrease the percentages of infarct area and cell loss induced by ischemic injury in the striatum (p<0.05, vs singly treated with taurine or EA), and also the percentage of TUNEL-positive cells was smaller than both singly treated groups (p<0.05). Moreover, immunoreactivities detection of Bcl-2 (which promotes cell survival), Bax (which promotes cell death) and P53 (product of tumor suppressor gene p53) showed that the combination group apparently attenuated P53 immunoreactivities expression whereas augmented the immunoreactivities expression ratio of Bcl-2 to Bax in cortex. These results suggested that combining use of taurine and EA could exert better neuroprotective effects, which might be related to the regulation of apoptosis pathway.