Protective effect of SB-3CT against long-term hippocampal damage and cognitive deficits after TBI.

<p><b><i>A.</i></b> Quantification of hippocampal lesion volume in vehicle and SB-3CT-treated mice, 30 days post-trauma. **, p<0.01 by one-tailed, unpaired Student’s t-test; n = 7 in vehicle-treated, 8 in SB-3CT-treated mice. Data are expressed as means ± SEM. <b><i>B.</i></b> Barnes maze acquisition. Testing consisted of 10 trials (2 trials/day) over 5 days. Latency (sec) of each trial was measured. Two-way repeated-measures ANOVA revealed a significant interaction (p = 0.0149) and significant main effects of days (p<0.0001) and groups (p = 0.0011). SB-3CT treated mice performed significantly better than vehicle-treated mice on days 22 and 23 after TBI; *, p<0.05, **, p<0.01; n = 11 in sham, 10 in vehicle-treated, and 11 in SB-3CT-treated mice. Data are expressed as means ± SEM. <b><i>C.</i></b> For analysis of memory acquisition in the maze, the latency AUC over 10 trials was calculated for each animal, and group comparisons were performed by one-way ANOVA, Dunnett’s post test, showing that SB-3CT ameliorates cognitive deficits after TBI; *, p<0.05 vs. vehicle-treated; n = 11 in sham, 10 in vehicle-treated, and 11 in SB-3CT-treated mice. Data are expressed as means ± SEM. <b><i>D.</i></b> Correlation between hippocampal damage and memory deficits. Hippocampal lesion volumes in 30 days and AUC were correlated by one-tailed Pearson correlation test. Pearson r = 0.5817, p<0.01; n = 6 in sham, 6 in vehicle-treated, and 8 in SB-3CT-treated mice. These data indicated significant correlation and three groups: sham, vehicle-treated, and SB-3CT treated showed good separation.