Abstract: Objective To explore the possible mechanism of quercetin on apoptosis of hippocampal neurons cultured in high glucose. Methods Hippocampus was obtained from newborn 24 hours Sprague-Dawley rats and then primarily cultured. Then hippocampal neurons were divided into normal control group, high glucose group, quercetin group, quercetin+Akt inhibitor group and Akt agonist group. After each group was cultured in different conditioned medium for 72 hours, they were detected the apoptosis of neurons with flow cytometry, and the expression of Akt, p-Akt, Bcl-2 and Bax with Western blotting. Results Compared with the normal control group, the apoptosis rate of hippocampal neurons increased significantly (P<0.01), and p-Akt/Akt and Bcl-2/Bax decreased significantly (P<0.01) in the high glucose group. Compared with the high glucose group, the apoptosis rates of hippocampal neurons decreased significantly (P<0.01), and p-Akt/Akt and Bcl-2/Bax increased significantly (P<0.01) in the quercetin group and the Akt agonist group. Compared with the quercetin+Akt inhibitor group, the apoptosis rate of hippocampal neurons decreased significantly (P<0.01), and p-Akt/Akt and Bcl-2/Bax increased significantly (P<0.01) in the quercetin group. Conclusion Quercetin could reduce the apoptosis of hippocampal neurons cultured in high glucose, which may be achieved by increasing the phosphorylation of Akt protein in Akt signal pathway, and then increasing the expression of Bcl-2 and inhibiting the expression of Bax.

Key words: quercetin, protein kinase B, high glucose, hippocampal neurons, apoptosis, rats