Proceedings of the 8th Neurological Disorders Summit (NDS-2023)

Abstract

Introduction: Preexisting neurodegenerative diseases, perioperative stress, and inflammation play an essential role in accelerated neurocognitive decline after general anesthesia (GA) and surgery, termed perioperative neurocognitive disorder (PND). PND is an important public health problem potentially affecting millions of patients. Because neurodegenerative diseases pre-vail and worsen with age, PND is most readily detectable and studied in the aging population. Traumatic brain injury (TBI), with >50 million cases/year, is a dominant cause of disability in young adults. Similar to PND, the pathophysiology of TBI involves lasting dysregulation of stress response systems, neuroinflammation, and cognitive decline. Patients with a history of TBI may also require GA/surgery or sedation to treat conditions unrelated to TBI, or injuries sustained at the time of TBI. Here we tested whether the effects of GA/surgery, TBI, and subsequent repeated exposure to the general anesthetic sevoflurane (SEVO) interact to induce neurological and neuroendocrine abnormalities in the exposed young adult male rats (an animal model of PND) and/or in their future offspring (intergenerational PND). Methods: All animal procedures were approved by IACUC. Sprague-Dawley