The effects of sage essential oil on memory Impairment, anxiety and depression in the scopolamine rat model of Alzheimer’s disease

Abstract

Neuroprotective activities of the essential oil extracted from Salvia multicaulis (1% and 3%, for 21 continuous days), was studied by means of in vivo (Y-maze, radial arm-maze, elevated plus-maze and forced swimming tests) approaches in scopolamine (0.7 mg/kg, i.p.)-induced amnesia rat model. As expected, the scopolamine alone-treated rats exhibited the following: decrease of spontaneous alternation percentage in Y-maze test, increase of the number of working memory errors and the number of reference memory errors in radial arm-maze test along with decrease of the exploratory activity, the percentage of the time spent and the number of entries in the open arm within elevated plus-maze test and decrease of swimming time and increase of immobility time within forced swimming test. Dual scopolamine and Salvia multicaulis essential oil-treated rats showed significant improvement of memory formation and exhibited anxiolytic- and antidepressant-like effects in scopolamine-treated rats. These results suggest the neuroprotective potential of Salvia multicaulis essential oil in scopolamine-induced amnesia in rats and could act as a promising therapeutic agent for the neurological abnormalities related to Alzheimer's disease.