ZATARIA MULTIFLORA BOISS IMPROVES LEARNING AND MEMORY IMPAIRMENT INDUCED BY TOXOPLASMA GONDII INFECTION

Recent epidemiological and experimental studies also showed that latent toxoplasmosis can lead to a number of neurological and behavioral disorders such as learning and memory impairments. Recent studies showed that the essential oil and methanolic extract of the Zataria multiflora revealed a significant anticholinesterase activity on in vitro (). Here, we evaluated the effect of Z. multiflora essential oil to ameliorate learning and memory impairments induced by T. gondii infection in BALB/c mice. The animal model of Toxoplasma infection was established by the intraperitoneal inoculation of 20-25 tissue cysts from Tehran strain of T. gondii. Morris water maze (MWM) task was used to assay spatial learning and short term spatial memory in all groups. The findings revealed that in this study demonstrated that latent toxoplasmosis impaired spatial leaning and short term spatial memory of the infected BALB/c mice, while ZME, due having AChE inhibitor activity, improved impairments induced by Toxoplasma infection. The obtained findings demonstrated ZME as an AChE inhibitor to improves learning and memory disorders in mice with latent toxoplasmosis probably via restoring ACh levels in brain. However, additional studies are needed to clarify these mechanisms and also other possible ones. (C) 2017 Published by Future Academy www.FutureAcademy.org.UK