Restorative effects of curcumin on sleep-deprivation induced memory impairments and structural changes of the hippocampus in a rat model

The present study examined the consequences of rapid eye-movement sleep-deprivation (REM-SD) with or without curcumin treatment. The outcome measures comprised quantitative features in the three-dimensional reconstruction (3DR) CA1 and dentate gyrus in experimental and control animals using stereological procedures.Male rats were arbitrarily assigned to nine groups based on the intervention and treatment administered including: 1-cage control + distilled water, 2-cage control + curcumin (100 mg/kg/day), 3-cage control + olive oil, 4-REM-SD + distilled water, 5-REM-SD + curcumin, 6-REM-SD + olive oil, 7-grid-floor control + distilled water, 8-grid-floor control + curcumin, and 9-grid-floor control + olive oil. Animals in the latter three groups were placed on wire-mesh grids in the sleep-deprivation box. REM-SD was induced by an apparatus comprising a water tank and multiple platforms. After a period of 21 days, rats were submitted to the novel object-recognition task. Later, their brains were excised and evaluated using stereological methods.Our results indicated a respective 29% and 31% reduction in the total volume of CA1, and dentate gyrus in REM-SD + distilled water group as compared to the grid-floor control + distilled water group (p < 0.05). Other than the above, the overall number of the pyramidal cells of CA1 and granular cells of dentate gyrus in the sleep-deprived group were found to be reduced by 48% and 25%, respectively. The REM-SD + distilled water group also exhibited impaired object recognition memory and deformed three-dimensional reconstructions of these regions. The volume, cell number, reconstruction, object recognition time, and body weight were however recovered in the REM-SD + curcumin compared to the REM-SD + distilled water group. This suggests the potential neuro-restorative effects of curcumin in our model.