| Summary: | Recently, our research team has reported that Tualang honey was able to improve immediate memory
in postmenopausal women comparable with that of estrogen progestin therapy. Therefore the aim
of the present study was to examine the effects of Tualang honey supplement on hippocampal morphology
and memory performance in ovariectomized (OVX) rats exposed to social instability stress.
Female Sprague-Dawley rats were divided into six groups: (i) sham-operated controls, (ii) stressed shamoperated
controls, (iii) OVX rats, (iv) stressed OVX rats, (v) stressed OVX rats treated with 17�-estradiol
(E2), and (vi) stressed OVX rats treated with Tualang honey. These rats were subjected to social instability
stress procedure followed by novel object recognition (NOR) test. Right brain hemispheres were
subjected to Nissl staining. The number and arrangement of pyramidal neurons in regions of CA1, CA2,
CA3 and the dentate gyrus (DG) were recorded. Two-way ANOVA analyses showed significant interactions
between stress and OVX in both STM and LTM test as well as number of Nissl-positive cells in all
hippocampal regions. Both E2 and Tualang honey treatments improved both short-term and long-term
memory and enhanced the neuronal proliferation of hippocampal CA2, CA3 and DG regions compared to
that of untreated stressed OVX rats
|
|---|