Ferulic acid chronic treatment exerts antidepressant-like effect: role of antioxidant defense system

• Published in: Metabolic brain disease Vol. 30; no. 6; pp. 1453 - 1463
• Main Authors: Lenzi, Juliana, Rodrigues, Andre Felipe, Rós, Adriana de Sousa, de Castro, Bianca Blanski, de Lima, Daniela Delwing, Magro, Débora Delwing Dal, Zeni, Ana Lúcia Bertarello
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01.12.2015; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Animals; Antidepressive Agents - pharmacology; Antidepressive Agents, Second-Generation - pharmacology; Antioxidants - metabolism; Antioxidants - pharmacology; Biochemistry; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Biomedicine; Brain Chemistry - drug effects; Cerebral Cortex - drug effects; Cerebral Cortex - metabolism; Coumaric Acids - pharmacology; Fluoxetine - pharmacology; Hindlimb Suspension - psychology; Hippocampus - drug effects; Hippocampus - metabolism; Male; Metabolic Diseases; Mice; Motor Activity - drug effects; Neurology; Neurosciences; Oncology; Original Article; Stress, Psychological - metabolism; Stress, Psychological - psychology; Swimming - psychology; Antidepressant-like effect; Antioxidative/oxidative stress; Fluoxetine; Ferulic acid
• ISSN: 0885-7490; 1573-7365
• DOI: 10.1007/s11011-015-9725-6

Oxidative stress has been claimed a place in pathophysiology of depression; however, the details of the neurobiology of this condition remains incompletely understood. Recently, treatments employing antioxidants have been thoroughly researched. Ferulic acid (FA) is a phenolic compound with antioxidant and antidepressant-like effects. Herein, we investigated the involvement of the antioxidant activity of chronic oral FA treatment in its antidepressant-like effect using the tail suspension test (TST) and the forced swimming test (FST) in mice. The modulation of antioxidant system in blood, hippocampus and cerebral cortex was assessed after stress induction through TST and FST. Our results show that FA at the dose of 1 mg/kg has antidepressant-like effect without affecting locomotor activity. The stress induced by despair tests was able to decrease significantly the activities of superoxide dismutase (SOD) in the blood, catalase (CAT) in the blood and cerebral cortex and glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px) in the cerebral cortex. Thiobarbituric acid-reactive substances (TBA-RS) levels were increased significantly in the cerebral cortex. Furthermore, the results show that FA was capable to increase SOD, CAT and GSH-Px activities and decrease TBA-RS levels in the blood, hippocampus and cerebral cortex. These findings demonstrated that FA treatment in low doses is capable to exert antidepressant-like effect with the involvement of the antioxidant defense system modulation.