Journal of neurochemistry
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Journal of neurochemistry · Jan 2021
Increasing the interval between repeated anesthetic exposures reduces long-lasting synaptic changes in late post-natal mice.
While recent studies strongly suggest that a single, short anesthetic exposure does not affect neurodevelopment, the effects of multiple exposures remain unclear. Unfortunately, studying "multiple exposures" is challenging as it is an extremely heterogeneous descriptor comprising diverse factors. One potentially important, but unrecognized factor is the interval between anesthetic exposures. ⋯ Although there was no change in learning and memory, short-interval sevoflurane exposures also impaired LTP in a non-sex-dependent manner (control: 171.10 ± 26.90%, sevoflurane: 149.80 ± 26.48 %). Most importantly, we were unable to find long-lasting consequences in mice that received long-interval sevoflurane exposures. Our study provides novel insights regarding the significance of the interval between multiple exposures, and also suggests that the neurotoxic effects of multiple anesthetic exposures may be reduced by simply increasing the interval between each exposure.