Effects of Ginkgo biloba Extract EGb 761, Donepezil and their Combination on Central Cholinergic Function in Aged Rats
Bibliographic record
Abstract
PURPOSE: Ginkgo extract EGb 761 and cholinesterase inhibitors have been shown to be effective in the treatment of dementia patients. In addition to neuroprotective effects, Ginkgo extract EGb 761 has been reported to elevate brain levels of certain neurotransmitters such as dopamine, noradrenaline, and acetylcholine. In the present study, we investigated the impact of EGb 761, donepezil and the combination of both drugs on the central cholinergic system in aged rats. METHODS: 24 month old rats received EGb 761 (100 mg/kg/day), donepezil (1.5 mg/kg/day), the combination of both drugs or vehicle control by oral gavage for 14 days. We used microdialysis in rat hippocampus to monitor extracellular concentrations of acetylcholine (ACh), choline, glucose and lactate. Brain homogenates were prepared to measure activities of acetylcholinesterase (AChE), choline acetyltransferase (ChAT) and high affinity choline uptake (HACU). RESULTS: While EGb 761 alone had no effect, donepezil and the combination of donepezil and EGb 761 increased basal ACh levels by 2- to 3-fold. Concomitantly, significant reductions of AChE and HACU were measured in both groups. No differences were seen between donepezil and the combination in these parameters. Treatment with EGb 761 decreased extracellular choline release and showed a tendency to moderately elevate ChAT activity. CONCLUSIONS: We found that donepezil and EGb 761 do not display a pharmacological interaction when given together. Adding EGb 761 did not modify the effects of donepezil on the hippocampal cholinergic system. Reduced choline levels indicate neuroprotective properties of EGb 761. Therefore, the combination of EGb 761 and donepezil may be beneficial in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease (AD). This article is open to POST-PUBLICATION REVIEW. Registered readers (see "For Readers") may comment by clicking on ABSTRACT on the issue's contents page.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".