Faezeh Nemati Karimooy
Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Iran
Title: Evaluating the neurotoxic effects of stanozolol on male rats' hippocampi: dose stanozolol cause apoptosis?
Biography
Biography: Faezeh Nemati Karimooy
Abstract
Anabolic-androgenic steroids make a cluster of hormones consisting natural male hormone, testosterone and its synthetic derivation. One of the most appealing drugs of this family is stanozolol which is abused by athletes in high doses for improving their energy, appearance and physical size. It is proved before not only dose stanozolol cause changes in behaviour; it also has various physical effects. Researches have been conducted on its neurotoxic impacts on CNS most of which are psychological-based. This study was performed to examine the apoptotic effect of stanozolol on different parts of rat hippocampus. For this experiment, 16 male Wistar rats were divided randomly and equally in two groups (control and experimental). The experimental group received subcutaneous injections of stanozolol (5 mg/Kg/day) for 28 days uninterruptedly. The control group was treated with normal saline in the same period. Then, animals were anesthetized and their brains were extracted. After routine procedures, the brain sections were stained with toluidine blue and TUNEL for dark neuron and apoptotic cell detection respectively. In order to compare the groups, the mean numbers of TUNEL-positive cells and dark neurons per unit area were calculated with stereological methods and analysed by SPSS software. Our histopathological examination revealed the number of dark neurons and apoptotic cells in the CA1, CA2, CA3 and dentate gyrus of hippocampus have significantly increased in stanozolol group compared to the control group. Therefore, abusing of stanozolol may induce dark neuron and apoptotic cell formation in different regions of hippocampus and cause memory disorders.