Can vitamin D prevent and/or alleviatehippocampal oxidative stress induced spatial memory impairment? An experimental study in male Long-Evans rats

Background: As spatial memory is essential for our every day lives, it’s impairment should be alleviated or prevented. For this, drug treatments have extensive side effects and lengthy duration. Objective: To assess the effects of vitamin D on spatial memory performance and hippocampal oxidative stress markers in colchicine induced memory impaired male Long-Evans rats. Methods: 30 male Long-Evans rats (8±2 weeks; 225±75 gm) were grouped (6 rats/ group) into normal control, sham control, colchicine control, pre colchicine D and post colchicine D. Then, reference memory (RM) [Mean escape latency (EL) in acquisition phase, average EL of 5th and 6th acquisition days; number of target crossing and time spent in target in probe trial] and working memory (WM) [Mean EL and savings in training and test phase] were assessed in Morris water maze. After sacrifice, hippocampal malondialdehyde and glutathione peroxidase were estimated for oxidative stress assessment. Data were expressed as mean±SEM and statistical analysis was done by one-way ANOVA followed by Bonferroni’s post hoc test. Result: Colchicine impaired both RM and WM as well as increased oxidative stress. Vitamin D prevented as well as alleviated WM impairment except savings and improved oxidative stress. However, after meticulous scrutiny of RM learning ability and consolidation, Pre D Exp rats had significantly better performance than those of Post D Exp rats. Conclusion: Vitamin D can prevent as well as alleviate colchicine induced spatial WM dysfunction along with oxidative stress but it was only found to be preventive, not alleviative in RM improvement. J Bangladesh Soc Physiol 2024;19(2): 68-81