Abstract
There is now a relatively large body of evidence suggesting a relationship between dysfunction of myelin and oligodendrocytes and the etiology of several neuropsychiatric disorders, including depression and schizophrenia, and also suggesting that ultrasound methods may alleviate some of the symptoms of depression. We have applied low-intensity pulsed ultrasound (LIPUS) to the brains of mice treated with the demyelinating drug cuprizone, a drug that has been used as the basis for a rodent model relevant to a number of psychiatric and neurologic disorders including depression, schizophrenia, and multiple sclerosis. Prior to conducting the studies in mice, preliminary studies were carried out on the effects of LIPUS in vitro in neuron-like SH-SY5Y cells and primary glial cells. In subsequent studies in mice, female C57BL/6 mice were restrained in plastic tubes for 20 min daily with the ultrasound transducer near the end of the tube directly above the mouse’s head. LIPUS was used at an intensity of 25 mW/cm2 once daily for 22 days in control mice and in mice undergoing daily repetitive restraint stress (RRS). Behavioral or neurochemical studies were done on the mice or the brain tissue obtained from them. The studies in vitro indicated that LIPUS stimulation at an intensity of 15 mW/cm2 delivered for 5 min daily for 3 days in an enclosed sterile cell culture plate in an incubator increased the viability of SH-SY5Y and primary glial cells. In the studies in mice, LIPUS elevated levels of doublecortin, a marker for neurogenesis, in the cortex compared to levels in the RRS mice and caused a trend in elevation of brain levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor in the hippocampus relative to control levels. LIPUS also increased sucrose preference (a measure of the attenuation of anhedonia, a common symptom of several psychiatric disorders) in the RRS model in mice. The ability of LIPUS administered daily to rescue damaged myelin and oligodendrocytes was studied in mice treated chronically with cuprizone for 35 days. LIPUS increased cortex and corpus callosum levels of myelin basic protein, a protein marker for mature oligodendrocytes, and neural/glial antigen 2, a protein marker for oligodendrocyte precursor cells, relative to levels in the cuprizone + sham animals. These results of this exploratory study suggest that future comprehensive time-related studies with LIPUS on brain chemistry and behavior related to neuropsychiatric disorders are warranted.
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Funding
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) (JC) and the Capital Health Chair in Mental Health (XL). The figures in this paper were taken from the MSc thesis of Huining Guo (University of Alberta), with her permission; Huining is the first author on this paper.
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Clinical impact statement: There is an urgent need for more effective therapy of a number of neuropsychiatric disorders, including depression and schizophrenia, and the exploratory neurochemical and behavioral findings in the study reported here suggest that LIPUS may be a useful, relatively non-invasive adjunct treatment for these serious mental illnesses by affecting factors involved in neurogenesis and myelination.
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Guo, H., Baker, G., Hartle, K. et al. Exploratory study on neurochemical effects of low-intensity pulsed ultrasound in brains of mice. Med Biol Eng Comput 59, 1099–1110 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11517-021-02351-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11517-021-02351-9