GABAergic ventrolateral pre‑optic nucleus neurons are involved in the mediation of the anesthetic hypnosis induced by propofol

Yuan,Jie; Luo,Zhuxin; Zhang,Yu; Zhang,Yi; Wang,Yuan; Cao,Song; Fu,Bao; Yang,Hao; Zhang,Lin; Zhou,Wenjing; Yu,Tian

doi:10.3892/mmr.2017.7035

GABAergic ventrolateral pre‑optic nucleus neurons are involved in the mediation of the anesthetic hypnosis induced by propofol

Authors:
- Jie Yuan
- Zhuxin Luo
- Yu Zhang
- Yi Zhang
- Yuan Wang
- Song Cao
- Bao Fu
- Hao Yang
- Lin Zhang
- Wenjing Zhou
- Tian Yu
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Affiliations: Department of Anesthesiology, Affiliated Hospital of Zunyi Medical College, Zunyi, Guizhou 563000, P.R. China, Guizhou Key Laboratory of Anesthesia and Organ Protection, Zunyi Medical College, Zunyi, Guizhou 563000, P.R. China
Published online on: July 18, 2017 https://doi.org/10.3892/mmr.2017.7035
Pages: 3179-3186
Copyright: © Yuan et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution License.

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Abstract

Intravenous anesthetics have been used clinically to induce unconsciousness for seventeen decades, however the mechanism of anesthetic‑induced unconsciousness remains to be fully elucidated. It has previously been demonstrated that anesthetics exert sedative effects by acting on endogenous sleep‑arousal circuits. However, few studies focus on the ventrolateral pre‑optic (VLPO) to locus coeruleus (LC) sleep‑arousal pathway. The present study aimed to investigate if VLPO is involved in unconsciousness induced by propofol. The present study additionally investigated if the inhibitory effect of propofol on LC neurons was mediated by activating VLPO neurons. Microinjection, target lesion and extracellular single‑unit recordings were used to study the role of the VLPO‑LC pathway in propofol anesthesia. The results demonstrated that GABAA agonist (THIP) or GABAA antagonist (gabazine) microinjections into VLPO altered the time of loss of righting reflex and the time of recovery of righting reflex. Furthermore, propofol suppressed the spontaneous firing activity of LC noradrenergic neurons. There was no significant difference observed in firing activity between VLPO sham lesion and VLPO lesion rats. The findings indicate that VLPO neurons are important in propofol‑induced unconsciousness, however are unlikely to contribute to the inhibitory effect of propofol on LC spontaneous firing activity.

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