Early neonatal but not late neonatal sevoflurane inhalation induced special memory impairment revealed by behavioral investigation of mouse

Sevoflurane is a volatile anesthetic that was developed relatively recently, and is now widely used in clinical anesthesia for infants. Sevoflurane has proposed effects on GABAa receptor-mediated extrasynaptic tonic inhibition. Recent reports have shown that exposure to sevoflurane at an early age lead to long-term cognitive dysfunction using animal models. However, the mechanisms underlying the sevoflurane induced cognitive dysfunction have not been fully understood. Aiming to find the mechanisms we observed behavioral changes of adult mice after the exposure to sevofrulane at different neonatal stage to define the period during which the sevoflurane exposure induces the long-term cognitive dysfunction. Neonatal mice (3-5 days, 12days, 20 days after birth) were exposed to 2% sevoflurane in O2 for 4hrs. These mice were trained for 4 days (6 trials/day) from 49 days after birth for water maze test using a 1.2m diameter pool with a 10cm diameter platform. The escape latencies and the percent time of swim in...