Antidepressant Effects of Crocin‐1 from Saffron in Mice with Chronic Unpredictable Mild Stress‐Induced Depression

Abstract

AimDepression is a severe disorder that has enormous consequences for the individual's quality of life, and it is among the most prevalent forms of mental illness. Saffron, a famous herb medicine and spice in the world, has been suggested as a potential efficacious and tolerable treatment for depression and anxiety, while there is no study about the effect of crocin‐1 on depression and a few studies about the mechanism of saffron. So the aim of this study was to investigate the effects of crocin‐1, one of the most important active compounds in saffron, on chronic unpredictable mild stress (CUMS) induced depression in mice.MethodsThe effects of crocin‐1 were examined using CUMS induced depression ICR mice and factors including depressant‐like behaviors, neurotransmitters, the expression of MKP‐1, CREB and BDNF.ResultsOur data showed that crocin‐1 significantly prevented reduction of body weight induced by CUMS. Oral administration of crocin‐1 (10, 20, and 40mg/kg) markedly improved depressant‐like behaviors, increasing the latency and reducing the immobility time in both the tail suspension test and forced swimming tests, compared with the CUMS mice. Enzyme‐linked immunosorbent (Elisa) assay were performed on serum and it showed that crocin‐1 treatment not only restored the decreased neurotransmitter concentrations of dopamine (DA) and serotonin (5‐HT), but also increased the level of mBDNF and decreased proBDNF. The results of reverse transcription‐polymerase chain reaction and Elisa assay showed that crocin‐1 decreased the level of MKP‐1 mRNA and MKP‐1 expression in hippocampus, moreover, it also increased the level of BDNF mRNA expression and CREB mRNA expression.ConclusionTaken together, our study confirmed that crocin‐1 might have an antidepressant‐like effect in the CUMS model of depression in mice, and suggest it might be mediated by regulation of neurotransmitters, activation MKP‐1/CREB/BDNF pathway and balanced the ratio of proBDNF and mBDNF.Support or Funding InformationThis work was supported by Natural Science Foundation of China (81703688), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2016M592016) and Key Project of Science and Technology Department of Zhejiang Province (2015C02032).This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.