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Baicalin Attenuates Ketamine-Induced Neurotoxicity in the Developing Rats: Involvement of PI3K/Akt and CREB/BDNF/Bcl-2 Pathways

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A Correction to this article was published on 29 March 2023

A Correction to this article was published on 13 April 2022

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Abstract

Ketamine is widely used as an anesthetic in pediatric clinical practice. However, numerous studies have reported that exposure to ketamine during the developmental period induces neurotoxicity. Here we investigate the neuroprotective effects of baicalin, a natural flavonoid compound, against ketamine-induced apoptotic neurotoxicity in the cortex and hippocampus of the Sprague–Dawley postnatal day 7 (PND7) rat pups. Our results revealed that five continuous injections of ketamine (20 mg/kg) at 90-min intervals over 6 h induced obvious morphological damages of neuron by Nissl staining and apoptosis by TUNEL assays in the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus of PND7 rat pups. Baicalin (100 mg/kg) pretreatment alleviated ketamine-induced morphological change and apoptosis. Caspase-3 activity and caspase-3 mRNA expression increase induced by ketamine were also inhibited by baicalin treatment. LY294002, an inhibitor of PI3K, abrogated the effect of baicalin against ketamine-induced caspase-3 activity and caspase-3 mRNA expression increase. In addition, Western blot studies indicated that baicalin not only inhibited ketamine-induced p-Akt and p-GSK-3β decrease, but also relieved ketamine-induced p-CREB and BDNF expression decrease. Baicalin also attenuated ketamine-induced Bcl-2/Bax decrease and caspase-3 expression increase. Further in vitro experiments proved that baicalin mitigated ketamine-induced cell viability decrease in the MTT assay, morphological change by Rosenfeld’s staining, and caspase-3 expression increase by Western blot in the primary neuron–glia mixed cultures. LY294002 abrogated the protective effect of baicalin. These data demonstrate that baicalin exerts neuroprotective effect against ketamine-induced neuronal apoptosis by activating the PI3K/Akt and its downstream CREB/BDNF/Bcl-2 signaling pathways. Therefore, baicalin appears to be a promising agent in preventing or reversing ketamine’s apoptotic neurotoxicity at an early developmental stage.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by grants from the Natural Science Foundation of China (81403023), the Program for Liaoning Excellent Talents in University (LJQ2015111), and the Scientific Research Foundation for Returned Scholars, Ministry of Education of China.

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  1. Department of Pharmacology, Shenyang Pharmaceutical University, 103 Wenhua Road, Shenyang, Liaoning, 110016, People’s Republic of China

    Daiying Zuo, Li Lin, Yumiao Liu, Chengna Wang, Jingwen Xu, Feng Sun, Lin Li, Zengqiang Li & Yingliang Wu

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  1. Daiying Zuo
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Correspondence to Yingliang Wu.

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Zuo, D., Lin, L., Liu, Y. et al. Baicalin Attenuates Ketamine-Induced Neurotoxicity in the Developing Rats: Involvement of PI3K/Akt and CREB/BDNF/Bcl-2 Pathways. Neurotox Res 30, 159–172 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12640-016-9611-y

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