Research articleThe effect of taurine and enriched environment on behaviour, memory and hippocampus of diabetic rats

- Taurine is able to positively influence on memory and behaviour of diabetic animals.
- Taurine also appears to influence in neurodegeneration processes and neuronal apoptosis.
- Animals subjected to enriched environment have better memory.
- Taurine and EE seem to have positive synergistic effects on animals.

Diabetes mellitus (DM) has been studied recently as a major cause of cognitive deficits, memory and neurodegenerative damage. Taurine and enriched environment have stood out for presenting neuroprotective and stimulating effects that deserve further study. In this paper, we examined the effects of taurine and enriched environment in the context of diabetes, evaluating effects on behaviour, memory, death and cellular activity. Eighty-eight Wistar rats were divided into 2 groups (E = enriched environment; C = standard housing). Some animals (24/group) underwent induction of diabetes, and within each group, some animals (half of diabetics (D) and half of non-diabetics (ND)/group) were treated for 30 days with taurine (T). Untreated animals received saline (S). In total, there were eight subgroups: DTC, DSC, NDTC, NDSC, DTE, DSE, NDTE and NDSE. During the experiment, short-term memory was evaluated. After 30th day of experiment, the animals were euthanized and was made removal of brains used to immunohistochemistry procedures for GFAP and cleaved caspase-3. As a result, we observed that animals treated with taurine showed better performance in behavioural and memory tasks, and the enriched environment had positive effects, especially in non-diabetic animals. Furthermore, taurine and enriched environment seemed to be able to interfere with neuronal apoptosis and loss of glial cells, and in some instances, these two factors seemed to have synergistic effects. From these data, taurine and enriched environment may have important neurostimulant and neuroprotective effects.