BEHAVIORAL STUDIES OF DASATINIB AND RESVERATROL IN ROTENONE INDUCED PARKINSON’S RAT MODEL

Neurodegeneration accounts for diseases like Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, Huntington’s disease, etc. that come under neurodegenerative diseases. Parkinson’s disease is the second most common neurodegenerative disease. The main hallmarks of Parkinson’s disease are progressive loss of motor control and cognitive dysfunction. Current treatments are of reducing the symptoms, do not address the long term complications like motor and cognitive dysfunction and have serious side effects as well. Recent research has linked tyrosine kinase activity dysfunction and mitochondrial dysfunctions to the main etiologies of Parkinson’s disease of familial and sporadic origin. Since Parkinson’s disease occur due to multiple etiologies, using a combination of drugs that target different etiologies could be an ideal strategy to address neurodegeneration. In the present study, the neuroprotective efficacy of a combination of tyrosine kinase inhibitor; dasatinib and natural antioxidant resveratrol were studied. Stereotaxic infusion of rotenone was given to rats to induce Parkinson’s disease, with nine treatment groups. The neuroprotective efficacy of the drug combinations was evaluated in different treatment groups by checking, behavioral studies, like learning and memory using radial arm maze, anxiety level using elevated plus maze and muscle grip strength using rotarod. The drug combination results were more inclined towards the sham control and found to be significant for all three experiments compared to rotenone group. Further, the results demonstrated that the drug combinations are potent candidates for rescuing the neurons from neurodegeneration.