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Taurine ameliorates axonal damage in sciatic nerve of diabetic rats and high glucose exposed DRG neuron by PI3K/Akt/mTOR-dependent pathway

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Abstract

Diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN) is a common complication of diabetes and axonopathy is its main pathological feature. Previous studies suggested an advantage of taurine against diabetes. However, there are few reports which study the effect of taurine against axonopathy. In this study, we confirmed that taurine significantly decreased blood glucose level, mitigated insulin resistance and improved dysfunctional nerve conduction in diabetic rats. Taurine corrected damaged axonal morphology of sciatic nerve in diabetic rats and induced axon outgrowth of Dorsal root ganglion (DRG) neurons exposed to high glucose. Taurine up-regulated phosphorylation levels of PI3K, Akt, and mTOR in sciatic nerve of diabetic rats and DRG neurons exposed to high glucose. However, Akt and mTOR inhibitors (MK-2206 and Rapamycin) blocked the effect of taurine on improving axonal damage. These results indicate that taurine ameliorates axonal damage in sciatic nerve of diabetic rats by activating PI3K/Akt/mTOR signal pathway. Our findings provide taurine as a potential candidate for axonopathy and a new evidence for elucidating protective mechanism of taurine on DPN.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 81273038, No. 81773402), the Dalian Municipal Science and Technology Plan Project (No. 2013E15SF163), and the Dalian Science and Technology Innovation Foundation (No. 2019J13SN91).

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Author notes

  1. The first authors Mengren Zhang and Xiaoxia Shi contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Occupational and Environmental Health, Dalian Medical University, Dalian, 116044, China

    Mengren Zhang, Xiaoxia Shi, Mengxin Luo, Qi Lan & Shuangyue Li

  2. Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Dalian Medical University, Dalian, 116044, Liaoning, China

    Xiaoxia Shi & Hayan Ullah

  3. Department of Food Nutrition and Safety, Dalian Medical University, Dalian, 116044, Liaoning, China

    Cong Zhang

  4. Department of Urology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University, Dalian, China

    Xiaochi Chen

  5. Department of Regenerative Medicine Center and Stem Cell Clinical Research Center, The First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University, Dalian, 116011, China

    Yachen Wang

  6. Department of Integrative Laboratory, Affiliated Zhongshan Hospital of Dalian University, Dalian, 116001, China

    Fengyuan Piao

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  1. Mengren Zhang
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  2. Xiaoxia Shi
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  3. Mengxin Luo
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  4. Qi Lan
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  6. Cong Zhang
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  8. Xiaochi Chen
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  9. Yachen Wang
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Contributions

FP, YW contributed to the study design. XS and FP edited the manuscript. MZ, XS, ML, QL, CZ, and XC performed the experiments. SL analyzed the data. HU modified the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Yachen Wang or Fengyuan Piao.

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No potential conflicts of interest relevant to this article were reported.

Ethical approval

This research was conducted in according to animal guideline from Dalian Medical University which was in agreement to ethical committee of Dalian Medical University, (Permit No. SCXK (Liao) 2015–2003). The work was conformed to NIH Guide for Care. Every effort was made to minimize the amount of stress and suffering to animals. Adequate and standard measures were taken to reduce pain and discomfort considering human endpoints for animal suffer.

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Zhang, M., Shi, X., Luo, M. et al. Taurine ameliorates axonal damage in sciatic nerve of diabetic rats and high glucose exposed DRG neuron by PI3K/Akt/mTOR-dependent pathway. Amino Acids 53, 395–406 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00726-021-02957-1

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