Protective effect of tanshinones against ischemia injury in cultured primary cortex neurons

AIM To investigate protective effects and mechanism of tanshinones on ischemia-like injury models. METHODS Six ischemia models including hypoxia, hypoglucose, oxidant injury, caffeine injury, nitric oxide neurotoxicity and excitatory amino acid injury were used to assay the anti-ischemic roles of tanshinones in cultured primary cortex neurons. The changes of injuried cortex neurons were observed by the way of morphological examination, and live neurons of crystal violet staining were measured according to absorbent index. RESULTS it was found that tanshinones possessed obvious protective effects on primary neurons in injury models by the way of morphological e~nation. Crystal violet staining also indicated that tanshinones increased number of live neurons in injury models significantly. The protective effects of tanshinones on models of oxidant injury, caffeine injury and NMDA injury were superior to other injury models. CONCLUSIONS 83.0 μmol· L- 1 tanshinones protected rat cortex cells fm all injury models effectively in vitro.