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The dorsal and the ventral side of hypoglossal motor nucleus showed different response to chronic intermittent hypoxia in rats

  • Sleep Breathing Physiology and Disorders • Original Article
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Abstract

Purpose

To study neurochemical reactions to chronic intermittent hypoxia (CIH) in the hypoglossal nucleus (HN) of rats.

Methods

Adult male Sprague-Dawley rats (n = 12) were randomly divided into two groups (the CIH and the control group). The CIH rats were housed in a hypoxic chamber with the fraction of oxygen volume alternating between 21% and 5% by providing air for 60 s and then providing nitrogen for 60 s from 8:30 am to 16:30 pm each day for 35 days. The control group was housed in a cabin with normal oxygen levels. We studied the expression of c-fos protein, 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) positive terminals, and its 2A receptors in hypoglossal nuclei by immunohistochemistry.

Results

The expression of c-fos, 5-HT positive terminals, and accordingly 5-HT 2A receptors in the CIH group were significantly higher than that in the controls (p < 0.05). The ventral side of the HN showed a clearly higher expression of 5-HT and its 2A receptors than the dorsal side (p < 0.05).

Conclusion

There were 2 responses of the HN to CIH. First, CIH induced a higher expression of 5-HT positive terminals and its 2A receptors, and second, this reaction was much more evident in ventral side than in the dorsal side. We postulate that these responses may serve to be a protective and compensatory mechanism for CIH.

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Availability of data and material

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Funding

This study was funded by the LIUGEYI Project of Jiangsu Provincial Commission of Health and Family Planning (LGY2017070), and the Develop fund of Science and Technology of Nanjing Medical University (NMUB2019025).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Otorhinolaryngology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, 210029, China

    Rui Cao, Min-Juan Zhang, Ya-Jie Liu, Huan-Huan Wang, Qin-Xin Zhang, Ya-Wen Shi & Min Yin

  2. Experimental Teaching Demonstration Centre, School of Rehabilitation Medicine, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, China

    Yun-Tao Zhou

  3. Department of Otorhinolaryngology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University, Suzhou, 215006, China

    Jia-Chen Li

  4. Division of Head and Neck, the department of surgery, the faculty of medicine, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

    Thian-Sze Wong

Authors
  1. Rui Cao
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  2. Min-Juan Zhang
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Contributions

Conceptualization, writing, reviewing, editing, and supervision: Min Yin; data curation, writing, original draft preparation, and methodology: Rui Cao; software, validation: Min-Juan Zhang; writing, reviewing, and editing: Thian-Sze Wong; software: Jia-Chen Li; methodology: Ya-Jie Liu, Qin-Xin Zhang, Huan-Huan Wang, Ya-Wen Shi; funding acquisition: Yun-Tao Zhou.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Min Yin.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethics approval

All procedures performed in studies was approved by the experimental animal ethics committee of Nanjing Medical University and have therefore been performed in accordance with the ethical standards laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Min-Juan Zhang is co-first author.

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Cao, R., Zhang, MJ., Zhou, YT. et al. The dorsal and the ventral side of hypoglossal motor nucleus showed different response to chronic intermittent hypoxia in rats. Sleep Breath 25, 325–330 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11325-020-02125-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11325-020-02125-x

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