Affiliations 

  • 1 Faculty of Medicine, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Sungai Buloh Campus, Sungai Buloh, Malaysia
  • 2 Department of Biochemistry, Faculty of Medicine, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
  • 3 Department of Anatomy, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand
  • 4 School of Pharmacy, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand
Oxid Med Cell Longev, 2017;2017:6019796.
PMID: 29348790 DOI: 10.1155/2017/6019796

Abstract

Accumulating evidence suggests that altered arginine metabolism is involved in the aging and neurodegenerative processes. This study sought to determine the effects of age and vitamin E supplementation in the form of tocotrienol-rich fraction (TRF) on brain arginine metabolism. Male Wistar rats at ages of 3 and 21 months were supplemented with TRF orally for 3 months prior to the dissection of tissue from five brain regions. The tissue concentrations of L-arginine and its nine downstream metabolites were quantified using high-performance liquid chromatography and liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry. We found age-related alterations in L-arginine metabolites in the chemical- and region-specific manners. Moreover, TRF supplementation reversed age-associated changes in arginine metabolites in the entorhinal cortex and cerebellum. Multiple regression analysis revealed a number of significant neurochemical-behavioral correlations, indicating the beneficial effects of TRF supplementation on memory and motor function.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.