Cerebral Ischemia Reperfusion Exacerbates and Pueraria Flavonoids Attenuate Depressive Responses to Stress in Mice

Previous studies have shown that mice experiencing cerebral ischemia reperfusion (CIR) and stress can serve as a model of post stroke depression (PSD). The present study verified the acute antide-pressant effects of radix puerariae extract (PE) on PSD mice through behavior and gene expression ex-periments. CIR was found to reduce the sucrose consumption and tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) gene expres-sion. PE administration after CIR surgery was observed to significantly enhance the mRNA expression of TH in the hippocampus compared with the PSD group on Day 0 and Day 3 postsurgery. These findings in-dicate that PE contributes to the amelioration of behavior response in PSD mice, which is closely related with the protective effects of catecholamine synthesize against CIR brain damage.