Introduction: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is one of the major public health concerns but there is still no effective therapeutic approach that could reduce the brain damage and improve patients’ clinical outcome. Commonly used hypoglycemic drug, pioglitazone, agonist of the peroxisome proliferator activated receptor γ, has shown some favorable effects in our previous studies. The purpose of this research was to investigate dose-related effects of this drug on the astrocytosis in the parietal cortex and the hippocampal regions CA2, CA3 and dentate gyrus (DG) after the lateral fluid percussion injury (LFPI) in the rat. Material and methods: Moderate TBI was induced over the left parietal cortex. Ten minutes after the trauma induction animals were injected with different doses of pioglitazone or vehicle. Additional doses were applied at various time points post-TBI. Rats were sacrificed 72 h following LFPI and their brains were prepared for histological analyses. Sham operated, vehicle treated animals were used as the control group. In order to determine the extent of astrocytosis, glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) immunohistochemistry was used. Results: TBI caused significant increase in the astrocytosis in all the investigated brain regions. Pioglitazone treatment significantly decreased GFAP immunostaining in the parietal cortex and in the DG comparing to the vehicle-treated injured animals. Conclusions: Our experimental study showed that pioglitazone had beneficial effect on astrocytosis in parietal cortex and DG 72 h after the LFPI in the rat.

Temeljne medicinske znanosti