Minocycline attenuates post-operative cognitive impairment in aged mice by inhibiting microglia activation.

Although it is known that isoflurane exposure or surgery leads to post-operative cognitive dysfunction in aged rodents, there are few clinical interventions and treatments available to prevent this disorder. Minocycline (MINO) produces neuroprotection from several neurodegenerative diseases and various experimental animal models. Therefore, we set out to investigate the effects of MINO pre-treatment on isoflurane or surgery induced cognitive impairment in aged mice by assessing the hippocampal-dependent spatial memory performance using the Morris water maze task.

Impaired Spatial Learning Memory after Isoflurane Anesthesia or Appendectomy in Aged Mice is Associated with Microglia Activation.

Postoperative cognitive dysfunction (POCD) has been one of the most common problems in elderly patients following surgery. But the specific mechanism of POCD is still not clear. To further understand the reason of these postoperative behavioral deficits, we evaluated the spatial learning memory of both adult (3 months) and aged (18 months) male mice, 3 or 28 days after isoflurane (Iso) exposure for two hours or appendectomy (App).