Chemicals and reagents
We purchased the betanin, 2, 3, 5-triphenyltetrazolium chloride (TTC), cresyl violet, luxol fast blue and other biochemical analysis reagents used in the present study from Chemical express Co., Ltd., Merck Millipore (Samutprakarn, Thailand).
Animals
We obtained twelve-week-old (40-45 g) male ICR mice (Mus musculus) from the National Laboratory Animal Center, Mahidol University (Nakhon Pathom, Thailand). We housed one per cage in a temperature-controlled room (23±2 °C) with a 12/12-hr. light-dark cycle. All mice had access to standard food (N.082G) and reverse-osmosis water. The Animal Ethics committee, Faculty of Science, Kasetsart University, approved the experimental procedure (ID#ACKU65-SCI-007).
Experimental procedure
We randomly divided forty male ICR mice into 4 experimental groups (n = 10 for each group): Sham-veh, IR-veh, IR-Bet50 and IR-Bet100. We administered a two-week pretreatment with normal saline (veh) in the Sham-veh and IR-veh groups and betanin (Bet) at 50 mg/kg and 100 mg/kg orally in the IR-Bet50 and IR-Bet100 groups, respectively. Fig.1 shows all the experimental protocols.
Induction of cerebral ischemia reperfusion
After two weeks of administration, all mice were fasting and prepared for operation. They received a 25-µl intraperitoneal injection of Zoletil 100 + X-Lazine (4:1), following IR induction by Sun and colleagues (2015). The mice in the IR groups underwent a 30-min bilateral common carotid artery occlusion. After removing the occlusion, we sutured the surgical wound and allowed the mouse to rest in a recovery chamber before returning it to its home cage. The mice in the Sham-veh group underwent surgery without arterial occlusion. After twenty-four hrs., we sacrificed all mice with an intraperitoneal injection of 50 µl of Zoletil 100 + X-Lazine (4:1). We quickly removed the brains for further analyses.
Cerebral infarction analysis
After quickly removing the brains, we washed them in cold normal saline and cut them into 2-mm serial sections using an acrylic brain block. We incubated the brain pieces in 2% TTC at 37 °C for 10 min and stored them in 10% neutral buffer formalin. We captured the brain pieces twenty-four hrs. later with a reference scale and used them for infarction analysis in Image J. Area analysis followed the principal TTC staining, that was area representing of reducing agent, i.e., NADH, which turned the viable areas red. On the other hand, infarction areas became pale due to their lack of dehydrogenase activity and inability to convert tetrazolium to formazan. We represented the whole brain infarction area as % infarction using the formula % infarction = [pale / (pale + red)] x 100.
Neuronal and white matter histological analysis
We further processed the brain pieces after infarction analysis for paraffin embedding and 5-µm sectioning with a microtome. Sampling area reference using the mouse brain stereotaxic starting from Bregma -1.94 (Franklin and Paxinos 2008). We selected five slides from each mouse with 125-µm intervals (Thong-Asa and Bullangpoti 2020). We deparaffinized and rehydrated all selected slides with xylene and serial changes of ethanol and incubated them in 0.1% luxol fast blue at 56 °C overnight. We then washed the slides in 95% ethanol and distilled water and differentiated them in a lithium carbonate solution for 30 sec, followed by 70% ethanol. After microscopic checking for sharply defined white matter, we counter-stained the slides with 0.1% cresyl violet before dehydration and finished by covering the slides (Somredngan and Thong-Asa 2018).
We microscopically captured areas of interests, i.e., the cerebral cortex, subfields of the hippocampus cornus ammonis (CA)1, CA3 and dentate gyrus (DG) as well as the white matter of the corpus callosum (CC), internal capsule (IC) and optic tract (Opt.). With 400x magnification, 2 investigators used 3 non-overlapping images from both hemispheres for neuronal counting in blind fashion using Image J. Viable cells were characterized as light purple and a clear nucleus and nucleolus. In contrast, cells that had undergone shrinkage were dark purple with a barely visible nucleus and nucleolus and defined as dead. We interpreted neuronal data as % degeneration using the formula % degeneration = [dead / (dead + viable)] x 100.
We captured white matter in the CC, IC and Opt. at 400x magnification and analyzed 3 non-overlapping images from both hemispheres using Image J. We presented the data from the intact fiber with luxol fast blue (LFB) as % area of white matter intact.
Biochemical analysis
After washing the brains with cold normal saline, we homogenated them in a 10% w/v phosphate buffer saline (50 mM, pH 7.4). We kept half of the brain tissue homogenate for MDA and GSH assays. We centrifuged the rest of the brain tissue homogenate at 10,000 g at 4 °C for 10 min and then analyzed the supernatant for total protein level and SOD and CAT activity.
We determined total brain protein using Lowry’s assay (Lowry et al. 1951). We mixed 0.2 ml of the supernatant with 2 ml of solution D (ratio 48:1:1) (2% w/v Na2CO3 in 0.1 N NaOH: 0.5% w/v CuSO4-5H2O in distilled water: 1% w/v C4H4KNaO6-4H2O) and incubated it for 10 min before adding 0.2 ml of 1 N Folin-Ciocalteu reagent (1:1). After 30 min of incubation, we read the mixture at 600 nm. We calculated protein concentration using the standard curve of bovine serum albumin 0, 0.009, 0.018, 0.027, 0.035 and 0.043 mg/ml (y = 0.1388x - 0.03, R² = 0.9934).
We measured the MDA level in the brain tissue to determine lipid peroxidation. In brief, we mixed 0.2 ml of brain homogenate with 4% sodium dodecyl sulfate, 1.5 ml of 20% acetic acid and 1.5 ml of 0.5% thiobarbituric acid. We heated the mixture at 95 °C for 1 hr. and then centrifuged it for 10 min at 3,500 rpm before reading the supernatant at 532 nm. We calculated the MDA concentration using the standard curve of MDA concentration 0, 0.93, 1.85, 2.76, 3.66 and 4.55 µM (y = 0.148x - 0.1082, R² = 0.9973). We presented brain tissue MDA concentration as µM/mg of protein (Sakamula et al. 2019, Sakamula and Thong-Asa 2018).
We measured GSH by mixing 0.1 ml of homogenate with 10% tricarboxylic acid and centrifuging it for 10 min. We collected 0.5 ml of supernatant and mixed it with 5, 5’ -dithios 2-nitro benzoic acid. We increased the final volume of the mixture to 3 ml using PBS before reading it at 412 nm. We calculated GSH concentration using the standard curve of GSH concentration 0, 0.0132, 0.0263, 0.0392, 0.0519 and 0.0645 µM (y = 0.1437x - 0.0538, R² = 0.9866). We presented brain tissue GSH concentration as µM/mg of protein (Manyagasa and Thong-asa 2019).
We measured SOD activity by mixing 0.1 ml of supernatant with 0.1 ml of EDTA (0.0001 M), 0.5 ml of carbonate buffer (pH 7.9) and 1 ml of epinephrine (0.0003 M). We read the absorbance every 30 sec at 480 nm for 3 min. We presented enzyme activity as U/mg of protein, using the standard curve of SOD concentration 0, 0.0058, 0.0294, 0.117 and 0.294 µg/ml (y = 0.0015x+0.0001, R2 = 0.998). Standard SOD activity was 6,150 U/mg (Merck, Germany) (Thong-Asa and Bullangpoti 2020).
We determined enzyme activity of CAT using 50 µl of supernatant and increased the volume to 3 ml with 0.05 M PBS (pH 7.4) containing 0.01 M H2O2. We read the absorbance every 30 sec at 240 nm for 3 min, and we calculated CAT activity with reference to the extinction coefficient of H2O2 and presented it as U/mg of protein (Hadwan and Abed 2016).
Statistical analysis
We interpreted all data as mean ± standard error of mean (S.E.M). We conducted one-way analysis of variance and used Fisher’s PLSD post hoc test for group comparison. We considered a p-value less than 0.05 statistically significant.