Credit: SciTechDaily.comA high-fat diet combined with surgery leads to long-lasting memory impairment due to brain swelling, which can be avoided by DHA supplements, according to a research study at The Ohio State University.Eating fatty food in the days leading up to surgical treatment might trigger a heightened inflammatory action in the brain that interferes for weeks with memory-related cognitive function in older adults– and, new research study in animals recommends, even in young adults.The research study, building upon previous research study from the same lab at The Ohio State University, likewise revealed that taking a DHA omega-3 fatty acid supplement for a month before the unhealthy eating and surgical procedure prevented the effects on memory linked to both the high-fat diet and the surgical treatment in young and aged adult rats.Inflammation and Memory ImpairmentThree days on a high-fat diet plan alone was detrimental to a specific type of fear-related memory in aged rats for as long as two weeks later on– the exact same type of problems seen in more youthful rats that consumed fatty food and had a surgical procedure. Different behavioral tasks are utilized to evaluate 2 types of memory: contextual memory based in the hippocampus and cued-fear memory based in the amygdala. Cued-fear memory is obvious when rats freeze in a new environment when they hear a sound connected to that previous bad experience.For aged rats in this study, as expected, the combination of a high-fat diet and surgical treatment led to problems with both cued-fear and contextual memory that continued for at least 2 weeks– a longer-lasting result than the scientists had seen before.The high-fat diet plan alone likewise impaired the aging rats cued-fear memory. And in young adult rats, the combination of the high-fat diet and surgical treatment led to only cued-fear memory deficits, however no issues with memory governed by the hippocampus.
Research study from The Ohio State University exposes that a high-fat diet plan before surgery can trigger substantial memory problems in rats, both young and old. This memory issue, related to an inflammatory reaction in the brain, can be reduced by taking DHA omega-3 fat supplements. Credit: SciTechDaily.comA high-fat diet integrated with surgical treatment leads to long-lasting memory impairment due to brain inflammation, which can be prevented by DHA supplements, according to a study at The Ohio State University.Eating fatty food in the days leading up to surgery might prompt a heightened inflammatory reaction in the brain that interferes for weeks with memory-related cognitive function in older grownups– and, new research study in animals recommends, even in young adults.The research study, building upon previous research from the same lab at The Ohio State University, also showed that taking a DHA omega-3 fat supplement for a month before the unhealthy eating and surgical procedure prevented the results on memory connected to both the high-fat diet and the surgery in aged and young adult rats.Inflammation and Memory ImpairmentThree days on a high-fat diet plan alone was harmful to a particular type of fear-related memory in aged rats for as long as two weeks later on– the exact same type of impairment seen in younger rats that ate fatty food and had a surgical treatment. The team has traced the brain swelling behind these impacts to a protein that triggers the immune response.”These information recommend that these numerous insults have a compounding impact,” stated senior author Ruth Barrientos, a detective in Ohio States Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research and associate teacher of psychiatry and behavioral health and neuroscience in the College of Medicine.”Weve shown that an unhealthy diet plan, even in the short term, specifically when its taken in so near to a surgical treatment, which in and of itself will cause an inflammatory action, can have damaging outcomes,” Barrientos stated. “The high-fat diet alone might increase swelling in the brain simply a bit, but then you have surgical treatment that does the exact same thing, and when created in a short quantity of time you get a synergistic action that can set things in movement towards a longer-term memory issue.”The research study was published just recently in the journal Brain, Behavior, and Immunity.Barrientos laboratory studies how daily life events might set off inflammation in the aging brain as the anxious system reacts to signals from the immune system responding to a risk. Decades of research study has actually suggested that with aging comes long-lasting “priming” of the brains inflammatory profile and a loss of brain-cell reserve to bounce back.Researchers fed young person and aged rats a diet plan high in hydrogenated fat for three days before a treatment looking like exploratory abdominal surgery– an event already known to cause about a week of cognitive issues in an older brain. Control rats ate routine food and were anesthetized, but had no surgical treatment. (Barrientos lab has identified anesthesia alone does not trigger memory issues in rats.)Research Findings and Future DirectionsIn this research study, as in previous research on aged rats treated with morphine after surgery, the group showed that an immune system receptor called TLR4 was the culprit behind the brain inflammation and associated memory issues generated by both surgery and the high-fat diet, said very first author Stephanie Muscat, assistant clinical professor of neuroscience at Ohio State.”Blocking the TLR4 signaling pathway prior to the diet and surgery totally prevented that neuroimmune reaction and memory impairments, which verified this specific mechanism,” Muscat said. “And as we had found before in another design of an unhealthy diet, we showed that DHA supplementation did alleviate those inflammatory results and avoid memory deficits after surgery.”There were some unexpected memory findings in the brand-new work. Different behavioral jobs are utilized to check two kinds of memory: contextual memory based in the hippocampus and cued-fear memory based in the amygdala. In contextual memory tests, rats with typical memory freeze when they re-enter a space in which they had an unpleasant experience. Cued-fear memory is obvious when rats freeze in a brand-new environment when they hear a sound linked to that previous bad experience.For aged rats in this study, as anticipated, the mix of a high-fat diet and surgery led to issues with both contextual and cued-fear memory that persisted for a minimum of two weeks– a longer-lasting impact than the researchers had actually seen before.The high-fat diet alone likewise impaired the aging rats cued-fear memory. And in young adult rats, the mix of the high-fat diet plan and surgery led to only cued-fear memory deficits, but no issues with memory governed by the hippocampus.”What this is informing us in aged animals, in addition to the reality were seeing this very same problems in young animals after the high-fat diet and surgery, is that cued-fear memory is distinctively susceptible to the results of diet plan. And we dont know why,” Barrientos stated. “One of the important things were hoping to understand in the future is the vulnerability of the amygdala to these unhealthy diet plan obstacles.”With increasing evidence recommending that fatty and extremely processed foods can set off inflammation-related memory problems in brains of all ages, the consistent findings that DHA– one of 2 omega-3 fats in fish and other seafood and readily available in supplement kind– has a protective result are engaging, Barrientos said.”DHA was truly efficient at preventing these changes,” she said. “And thats remarkable– it actually suggests that this could be a prospective pretreatment, specifically if individuals know theyre going to have surgery and their diet is unhealthy.”Reference: “Post-operative cognitive dysfunction is exacerbated by high-fat diet plan through TLR4 and prevented by dietary DHA supplements” by Stephanie M. Muscat, Michael J. Butler, Menaz N. Bettes, James W. DeMarsh, Emmanuel A. Scaria, Nicholas P. Deems and Ruth M. Barrientos, 23 December 2023, Brain, Behavior, and Immunity.DOI: 10.1016/ j.bbi.2023.12.028Co-authors consisted of Michael Butler, Menaz Bettes, James DeMarsh, Emmanuel Scaria and Nicholas Deems, all of Ohio State.This work was supported by grants from the National Institute on Aging and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
