%A Jia,Min %A Liu,Wen-Xue %A Sun,He-Liang %A Chang,Yan-Qing %A Yang,Jiao-Jiao %A Ji,Mu-Huo %A Yang,Jian-Jun %A Feng,Chen-Zhuo %D 2015 %J Frontiers in Molecular Neuroscience %C %F %G English %K postoperative cognitive dysfunction,Aging,histone acetylation,neuroapoptosis,synaptic plasticity %Q %R 10.3389/fnmol.2015.00052 %W %L %M %P %7 %8 2015-September-23 %9 Original Research %+ Dr Chen-Zhuo Feng,Hangzhou Normal University,Hangzhou,China,fengchenzhuo@hotmail.com %# %! SAHA Attenuates Postoperative Cognitive Dysfunction in Aging Mice %* %< %T Suberoylanilide hydroxamic acid, a histone deacetylase inhibitor, attenuates postoperative cognitive dysfunction in aging mice %U https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnmol.2015.00052 %V 8 %0 JOURNAL ARTICLE %@ 1662-5099 %X 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.