Effects of Afobazole on Cognitive Behavior of the Offspring of Rats Exposed to Tobacco Smoke during Gestation Period

Abstract

Experiments on the model of foraging behavior formation under conditions of free choice (T-maze) revealed learning failure against the background of reduced motor activity in the offspring of rats exposed to tobacco smoke on gestation days 1-20. Afobazole administered to pregnant rats orally in doses of 1 or 10 mg/kg daily during the whole gestation and/or entering rat pup body with breast milk from mothers receiving 200 mg/kg to day 20 of their life normalized their learning capacity. The formation of short-term and long-term memory in animals receiving afobazole did not differ from the control. Hence, afobazole corrects cognitive disorders in rats exposed to tobacco smoke during prenatal development.

Chaperone-Dependent Mechanisms as a Pharmacological Target for Neuroprotection

“…In this review, we attempt to justify an assumption that neuroprotective effects of Sigma1R ligands are achieved by activation of Sigma1R and BiP chaperones through a dissociation of Sigma1R-BiP complex in ER-mitochondria contact region in the concert with multidirectional regulation of IRE1α-dependent UPR signaling. The validity of this assumption is confirmed by the similarity of protective cellular mechanisms induced by both ligand activation of Sigma1R and upregulation of BiP-dependent signaling, that can be observed, for example, following the analysis of cytoprotective effects of afobazole [177,[269][270][271]367,380,424,436,[463][464][465][466][467].…”