Abstract
Background: A lot of studies indicate that cancer chemotherapy drugs such as doxorubicin results in memory impairment. On the other hand, crocin as the chemical constituent isolated from the Saffron is effective on memory and motor enhancement. So, in this work, we have studied the co-administration effect of crocin and doxorubicin on avoidance memory and motor activity in adult male rat.
Material and Methods: In this study, 50 male rats were divided into 5 groups: control, sham, doxorubicin, crocin and treated rats with coadministration of doxorubicin and crocin. In crocin group, crocin injected 30mg/kg for 21 days and each rat in the chemotherapy group was treated once a week for 3 weeks with doxorubicin (5mg/kg). Treatment group, received doxorubicin and crocin at the same time. Sham groups administrated with saline. All drugs were injected intraperitoneally. After these procure passive avoidance memory, balance and exploratory behaviors were assessed respectively by shuttle box, rotarod and open field instruments.
Results: Memory in rats which have consumed doxorubicin significantly was decreased compared to other groups (p<0.001). Crocin treatment improved memory impairment following doxorubicin injection (p<0.001). Motor activity in open field and rotarod tests in treatment group showed significantly increased compared to doxorubicin group (p<0.001).
Conclusion: Crocin consumption beside of anticancer drugs such as doxorubicin has protective effect on the bad effects of chemotherapy drugs on memory and movement.
 

Introduction: Diabetes is a chronic and progressive metabolic disorder that causes heart tissue damage and changes in its protein levels. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of an incremental training period on MMP-2 and MEF2C protein in cardiac muscle tissue of diabetic Wistar rats.
Methods: In this experimental study, 40 male Wistar rats (age 10 weeks and average weight 245 ± 9.5 grams) were randomly divided into 4 groups of 10: diabetes-control (DC), diabetes-exercise (DT), healthy-exercise (HT) and healthy-control (HC). Intraperitoneal injection of streptozotocin (45 mg/kg) was used to cause diabetes. The training protocol was implemented for 6 weeks. 24 hours after the last training session, heart tissue was extracted. Western blot method was used to evaluate MMP-2 and MEF2C protein expression. Data analysis was done using one-way analysis of variance test.
Results: The results showed that diabetes causes a significant increase in MMP-2 protein expression levels and a significant decrease in MEF2C in the DC group compared to the HC group (P<0.05). although a period of increased training leads to a significant decrease in MMP-2 protein expression levels and a significant increase in MEF2C in the DT group compared to the DC group (P<0.05).
Conclusions: The findings of this research show that increasing aerobic exercise moderates the effects caused by diabetes in the expression of these two proteins, which seems to be a protective effect against cardiomyopathy changes caused by diabetes.