Abstract
Recent attention is given to the influence of dietary supplementation on health and mental well-being. Oxidative stress is associated with many diseases including neurodegenerative disorders. Dietary flavonoids exert chemopreventive and neuroprotective effects and comprise the most common group of plant polyphenols that provide much of the flavour and colour of the vegetables and fruits. Hesperidin is a flavanone glycoside found abundantly in citrus fruits, has been reported to have antioxidant, hypolipidaemic, analgesic and anti-hypertensive activity. Pretreatment of hesperidin (100 and 200mg/kg body weight orally once daily for 15 days) to Swiss male albino mice has prevented the cognitive impairment. The cognitive impairment was developed by giving single intracerebroventricular-streptozotocin (ICV-STZ) injection (2.57 mg/kg body weight each side) bilaterally. Hesperidin pretreatment improved memory consolidation process as tested by Morris water maze possibly through modulation of acetylcholine esterase activity (AChE). Moreover, hesperidin attenuated the depleted content of reduced glutathione (GSH) and elevated level of thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS) and also augmented lipid alteration significantly following ICV-STZ injection. We also demonstrated that the flavonoid hesperidin modulates neuronal cell death by inhibiting the overexpression of inflammatory markers like nuclear factor κB, inducible nitric oxide synthase, cyclooxygenase-2 and glial fibrillary acidic protein positive astrocytes. The results from the present study open the possibility of using flavonoids for potential new therapeutic strategies for sporadic dementia of Alzheimer's disease.