Royal Jelly Reduces Cholesterol Levels, Ameliorates Aβ Pathology and Enhances Neuronal Metabolic Activities in a Rabbit Model of Alzheimer’s Disease

Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience

卷:10

Fuliang Hu¹  Mengmeng You¹  Yongming Pan²  Fangming Chen²  Minli Chen²  Jianqin Xu²  Cheng Chen²  Keyan Zhu²  Chenyue W. Hu³  Ping Jin⁴ 

[1] College of Animal Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China;

[2] Comparative Medical Research Center, Experimental Animal Research Center, Zhejiang Chinese Medical University, Hangzhou, China;

[3] Department of Bioengineering, Rice University, Houston, TX, United States;

[4] The First Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang Chinese Medical University, Hangzhou, China;

关键词: royal jelly;    Alzheimer’s disease;    hypercholesterolemia;    amyloid plaques;    neuronal metabolism activity;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fnagi.2018.00050

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia characterized by aggregation of amyloid β (Aβ) and neuronal loss. One of the risk factors for AD is high cholesterol levels, which are known to promote Aβ deposition. Previous studies have shown that royal jelly (RJ), a product of worker bees, has potential neuroprotective effects and can attenuate Aβ toxicity. However, little is known about how RJ regulates Aβ formation and its effects on cholesterol levels and neuronal metabolic activities. Here, we investigated whether RJ can reduce cholesterol levels, regulate Aβ levels and enhance neuronal metabolic activities in an AD rabbit model induced by 2% cholesterol diet plus copper drinking water. Our results suggest that RJ significantly reduced the levels of plasma total cholesterol (TC) and low density lipoprotein-cholesterol (LDL-C), and decreased the level of Aβ in rabbit brains. RJ was also shown to markedly ameliorate amyloid deposition in AD rabbits from Aβ immunohistochemistry and thioflavin-T staining. Furthermore, our study suggests that RJ can reduce the expression levels of β-site APP cleaving enzyme-1 (BACE1) and receptor for advanced glycation end products (RAGE), and increase the expression levels of low density lipoprotein receptor-related protein 1 (LRP-1) and insulin degrading enzyme (IDE). In addition, we found that RJ remarkably increased the number of neurons, enhanced antioxidant capacities, inhibited activated-capase-3 protein expression, and enhanced neuronal metabolic activities by increasing N-acetyl aspartate (NAA) and glutamate and by reducing choline and myo-inositol in AD rabbits. Taken together, our data demonstrated that RJ could reduce cholesterol levels, regulate Aβ levels and enhance neuronal metabolic activities in AD rabbits, providing preclinical evidence that RJ treatment has the potential to protect neurons and prevent AD.

【 授权许可】

Unknown