• Fang Ding, Limin Zheng, Min Liu, Rongfa Chen, L Stan Leung, and Tao Luo.
• Department of Anesthesiology, Peking University Shenzhen Hospital, 1120 Lianhua Road, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China.
• J Anesth. 2016 Aug 1; 30 (4): 684-90.

BackgroundExposure to volatile anesthetics has been reported to cause temporary or sustained impairments in learning and memory in pre-clinical studies. The selective antagonists of the histamine H3 receptors (H3R) are considered to be a promising group of novel therapeutic agents for the treatment of cognitive disorders. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of H3R antagonist ciproxifan on isoflurane-induced deficits in an object recognition task.MethodsAdult C57BL/6 J mice were exposed to isoflurane (1.3 %) or vehicle gas for 2 h. The object recognition tests were carried at 24 h or 7 days after exposure to anesthesia to exploit the tendency of mice to prefer exploring novel objects in an environment when a familiar object is also present. During the training phase, two identical objects were placed in two defined sites of the chamber. During the test phase, performed 1 or 24 h after the training phase, one of the objects was replaced by a new object with a different shape. The time spent exploring each object was recorded.ResultsA robust deficit in object recognition memory occurred 1 day after exposure to isoflurane anesthesia. Isoflurane-treated mice spent significantly less time exploring a novel object at 1 h but not at 24 h after the training phase. The deficit in short-term memory was reversed by the administration of ciproxifan 30 min before behavioral training.ConclusionIsoflurane exposure induces reversible deficits in object recognition memory. Ciproxifan appears to be a potential therapeutic agent for improving post-anesthesia cognitive memory performance.

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