• Jun Peng, Julie K Drobish, Ge Liang, Zhen Wu, Chunxia Liu, Donald J Joseph, Hossam Abdou, Maryellen F Eckenhoff, and Huafeng Wei.
• From the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
• Anesth. Analg. 2014 Oct 1; 119 (4): 939-946.

BackgroundWe hypothesized that preconditioning (PC) with a short exposure to isoflurane (ISO) would reduce neurodegeneration induced by prolonged exposure to ISO in neonatal rats, as previously shown in neuronal cell culture.MethodsWe randomly divided 7-day-old Sprague-Dawley rats into 3 groups: control, 1.5% ISO, and PC + 1.5% ISO. The control group was exposed to carrier gas (30% oxygen balanced in nitrogen) for 30 minutes and then to carrier gas again for 6 hours the following day. The 1.5% ISO group was exposed to carrier gas for 30 minutes and then to 1.5% ISO for 6 hours the following day. The PC + 1.5% ISO group was preconditioned with a 30-minute 1.5% ISO exposure and then exposed to 1.5% ISO for 6 hours the following day. Blood and brain samples were collected 2 hours after the exposures for determination of neurodegenerative biomarkers, including caspase-3, S100β, caspase-12, and an autophagy biomarker Beclin-1.ResultsProlonged exposure to ISO significantly increased cleaved caspase-3 expression in the cerebral cortex of 7-day-old rats compared with the group preconditioned with ISO and the controls using Western blot assays. However, significant differences were not detected for other markers of neuronal injury.ConclusionsThe ISO-mediated increase in cleaved caspase-3 in the postnatal day 7 rat brain is ameliorated by PC with a brief anesthetic exposure, and differences were not detected in other markers of neuronal injury.

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