@ARTICLE{10.3389/fnmol.2015.00052, AUTHOR={Jia, Min and Liu, Wen-Xue and Sun, He-Liang and Chang, Yan-Qing and Yang, Jiao-Jiao and Ji, Mu-Huo and Yang, Jian-Jun and Feng, Chen-Zhuo}, TITLE={Suberoylanilide hydroxamic acid, a histone deacetylase inhibitor, attenuates postoperative cognitive dysfunction in aging mice}, JOURNAL={Frontiers in Molecular Neuroscience}, VOLUME={8}, YEAR={2015}, URL={https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnmol.2015.00052}, DOI={10.3389/fnmol.2015.00052}, ISSN={1662-5099}, ABSTRACT={Postoperative cognitive dysfunction (POCD) is a recognized clinical entity characterized with cognitive deficits after anesthesia and surgery, especially in aged patients. Previous studies have shown that histone acetylation plays a key role in hippocampal synaptic plasticity and memory formation. However, its role in POCD remains to be determined. Here, we show that suberoylanilide hydroxamic acid (SAHA), a histone deacetylase inhibitor, attenuates POCD in aging Mice. After exposed to the laparotomy, a surgical procedure involving an incision into abdominal walls to examine the abdominal organs, 16- but not 3-month old male C57BL/6 mice developed obvious cognitive impairments in the test of long-term contextual fear conditioning. Intracerebroventricular (i.c.v.) injection of SAHA at the dose of (20 μg/2 μl) 3 h before and daily after the laparotomy restored the laparotomy-induced reduction of hippocampal acetyl-H3 and acetyl-H4 levels and significantly attenuated the hippocampus-dependent long-term memory (LTM) impairments in 16-month old mice. SAHA also reduced the expression of cleaved caspase-3, inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) and N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor-calcium/calmodulin dependent kinase II (CaMKII) pathway, and increased the expression of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), synapsin 1, and postsynaptic density 95 (PSD95). Taken together, our data suggest that the decrease of histone acetylation contributes to POCD and may serve as a target to improve the neurological outcome of POCD.} }