生活不活発病による記憶障害に対する五味子エキスの作用

抄録

“Disuse syndrome” is the declining state of physical and mental functions due to physical inactivity, and it became more familiar probrem for the elderly in fraility as well as for young people living in “hikikomori". Our laboratory was the first to discover that skeletal muscle atrophy induced memory deficit in mice and its responsible myokine, hemopexin (Nagase T, Tohda C. 2021). We also identified other myokine which transferred to the central nervous system to promote axon elongation (Kodani A, et al. 2019). These studies suggest a relationship between muscle atrophy and brain function and the involvement of myokines in the phenomenone. The aim of this study was to explore effective drugs for the muscle atrophy-induced memory deficit.

We focused on Schisandra chinensis (SC), because many reports indicated that SC extract and its constituents increased skeletal muscle mass and muscle strength in mice and also humans by oral treatment. However, no studies investigated effects of SC on myokine-mediated regulation for cognitive function.

This study examined the effect of intramuscular injection of SC extract on memory deficit in a mouse model of disuse syndrome. To identify SC extract-induced myokines, atrophied skeletal muscle was isolated from mice and treated by SCextract ex vivo. Several candidates were obtained on silver stained PAGE. Identification and functional contribution of those proteins to memory are under investigation. We clarify the potential of SC extract and its molecular mechanism for disuse-elicited cognitive deficit.