The anti-epileptic drugs phenobarbital and valproic acid have an extremely strong negative effect on cognitive processes such as learning and memory in the developing brain. We examined whether or not curcumin has protective effects on neuronal injury caused by these drugs in the developing rat brain. Young male Wistar rats were studied in two groups, a 7 days old and a 14 days old group (35 rats in each). Both groups were then divided into 7 sub-groups as the control, curcumin, dimethylsulfoxide, phenobarbital, valproic acid, phenobarbital + curcumin, and valproic acid + curcumin groups (n = 5 in each group). At 24 h after the intraperitoneal injection of the compounds, the rats were sacrificed, and the hippocampal tissue was subjected to stereological analysis with the optical fractionation method. Total numbers of neurons in the hippocampus of the 7 days old and 14 days old rats were calculated. It was found that treatment with phenobarbital resulted in a loss of 43% of the neurons, and valproic acid induced a loss of 57% of the neurons in the 7 days old rats. Curcumin prevented this loss significantly with only 19% in the phenobarbital group and 41% in the valproic acid group. In the 14 days old rat groups, phenobarbital was found to reduce the number of neurons by 30%, and valproic acid reduced it by 38%. Curcumin treatment limited neuronal loss to 3% in the phenobarbital + curcumin group and 10% in the valproic acid + curcumin group. These data strongly indicate that curcumin is a protective agent and prevents hippocampal neuronal damage induced by phenobarbital and valproic acid treatment.

中文翻译：

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姜黄素对发育中大鼠脑中抗癫痫药苯巴比妥和丙戊酸引起的海马损伤的体视学检查。

抗癫痫药苯巴比妥和丙戊酸对大脑发育中的学习和记忆等认知过程具有极强的负面影响。我们检查了姜黄素是否对发育中的大鼠大脑中由这些药物引起的神经元损伤具有保护作用。雄性Wistar幼鼠分为两组，分别为7天大和14天大（每组35只）。然后将两组分为七个亚组，分别为姜黄素，二甲基亚砜，苯巴比妥，丙戊酸，苯巴比妥+姜黄素和丙戊酸+姜黄素组（每组n = 5）。腹膜内注射化合物后24小时，处死大鼠，并用光学分级法对海马组织进行立体分析。计算7日龄和14日龄大鼠海马中的神经元总数。发现用苯巴比妥治疗可导致7天大的大鼠神经元减少43％，丙戊酸可导致神经元的57％减少。姜黄素显着地阻止了这种损失，苯巴比妥组只有19％，丙戊酸组只有41％。在14天大的大鼠组中，苯巴比妥可减少30％的神经元数量，丙戊酸可减少38％。姜黄素治疗将苯巴比妥+姜黄素组的神经元损失限制在3％，而丙戊酸+姜黄素组的神经元损失限制在10％。这些数据强烈表明姜黄素是一种保护剂，可以预防苯巴比妥和丙戊酸治疗引起的海马神经元损伤。