Articles

  • the Korean Society for Brain and Neural Sciences

Article

Original

Exp Neurobiol 2006; 15(1): 31-38

Published online November 30, -0001

© The Korean Society for Brain and Neural Sciences

Induction of Ciliary Neurotrophic Factor and Its Receptor in the Rat Hippocampus with Induced Ischemic Tolerance

Ha-Young Kim, Jeong-Sun Choi, Hyun-Jung Park, Jung-Ho Cha and Mun-Yong Lee*

Department of Anatomy, College of Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea, Seoul 137-701, Korea

Correspondence to: *To whom correspondence should be addressed.
TEL: 82-2-590-1108, FAX: 82-2-536-3110
e-mail: munylee@catholic.ac.kr

Abstract

Ciliary neurotrophic factor (CNTF) has been shown to be upregulated in the ischemic brain and to prevent or ameliorate neuronal loss and functional impairments following ischemic injury. To investigate the potential role of CNTF in the ischemic preconditioning, we analyzed time dependent changes in the expression of CNTF and its receptor subunit, CNTFRՁ in the rat hippocampus following 3 minutes of sublethal ischemic injury. Immunohistochemistry showed that increase of CNTF was detectable at day 3, and then sustained weakly until day 14 after ischemic preconditioning, with the immunoreactivity localized to reactive astrocytes. The upregulation of CNTFRՁ mRNA in the CA1 and hilar region, which showed similar expression patterns, occurred in reactive astrocytes. These results show a change in the expression of CNTF and its receptor in the rat hippocampus following ischemic preconditioning, indicating that they might be involved in the neuronal survival and reorganization by regulating reactive astrocytes in the ischemic tolerance.

Keywords: CNTF, CNTFRՁ,, ischemic preconditioning, reactive astrocytes