Introduction: Parkinson's disease is a neurodegenerative disorder which accompanied with cognitive decline, chorei form moves and behavioral difficulties. This study aimed to investigate the protective effect of betanin on toxicity and oxidative damage induced by 6-hydroxy dopamine (6-OHDA) in PC12 cells as an appropriate model similar to Parkinson's cell damages.
Methods: PC12 cells were pretreated with betanin (1-200 µM) for 24h and then exposed to 6-OHDA (100 µM) for 24h. At the end, the cell survival, intracellular reactive oxygen species (ROS) production assessed by analysis of cell viability, ROS generation. Also the anti-apoptotic effects of betanin in PC12 cells were studied using flow cytometry after PI staining.
Results: betanin (1-200 µM) could decrease 6-OHDA (100 µM) toxicity and showed significant difference compared to the 6-OHDA group (P<0.05, P<0.01 and P<0.001). After exposure of cells to 6-OHDA (100 µM) for 24 h, betanin (1-200 µM) significantly decreased ROS (P<0.001). Cell apoptosis was significantly increased to 75.9% after treatment with 6-OHDA (100 µM) compared to control (1.9%). After pretreatment with betanin (20 and 50 μM); however, apoptosis was significantly reduced to (15.3% and 31.3%).
Conclusion: Our study revealed that betanin may exhibit protective effect on the apoptosis induced by 6-OHDA in PC12 cells, possibly by reducing oxidative stress. Thus, betanin may be considered as a valuable candidate drug for the treatment of Parkinson's disease