Abstract: Objective To explore the mechanism of the protection of acidic fibroblast growth factor (aFGF) for hippocampal astrocytes from injury induced by gentamicin. Methods Hippocampal astrocytes were isolated from newborn (24 hours) Sprague-Dawley rats, purified, and identified with glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) immunofluorescence. The third generations were cultured for 3 days and divided into 3 groups: control group was cultured routinely, injury group was cultured with 2.0 g/L gentamicin for 24 hours, and protection group was cultured with 4.25 μg/L aFGF for 24 hours and then cultured with 2.0 g/L gentamicin for 24 hours. Western blotting was adopted to detect the expressions of P38, extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK)1/2 and c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK)1/2. Results Hippocampal astrocytes were culturated successfully with the purity above 95%. The ERK1 increased in the injury group compared with the control group (P<0.05). Compared with the injury group, the p38 increased (P<0.05) and the ERK1 decreased (P<0.05) in the protection group. There was no significant difference among others (P>0.05). Conclusion The mitogen- activated protein kinase signal pathway, especially P38 and ERK1, may associate with the protection of aFGF for hippocampal astrocytes from injury induced by gentamicin.

Key words: acidic fibroblast growth factor, mitogen-activated protein kinase, gentamicin, astrocytes, hippocampus, rats