Growing evidence indicates that reduced uterine perfusion pressure (RUPP) triggers the cascade of events leading to
preeclampsia.
Edaravone is a powerful
free radical scavenger used for the treatment of
ischemia/reperfusion diseases due to its anti-oxidative stress and anti-inflammatory properties. Here we investigate the effect of
edaravone (3 mg/kg) on different maternal and fetal outcomes of RUPP-induced placental
ischemia mice model. RUPP surgery was performed on gestation day (GD) 13 followed by
edaravone injection from GD14 to GD18, sacrifice day. The results showed that
edaravone injection significantly decreased the maternal blood pressure (113.2 ± 2.3 mmHg) compared with RUPP group (131.5 ± 1.9 mmHg).
Edaravone increased fetal survival rate (75.4%) compared with RUPP group (54.4%), increased fetal length, weights, and feto-placental ratio (7.2 and 5.7 for RUPP and RUPP-
Edaravone groups, respectively) compared with RUPP group. In addition, RUPP resulted in many fetal morphological abnormalities as well as severe delayed ossification, however
edaravone decreased the morphological abnormalities and increased the ossification of the fetal endoskeleton.
Edaravone improved the histopathological structure of the maternal kidney and heart as well as decreased the elevated blood
urea and
creatinine levels (31.5 ± 0.15 mg/dl (RUPP), 25.6 ± 0.1 mg/dl (RUPP+edaravone) for
urea and 5.4 ± 0.1 mg/dl (RUPP), 3.5 ± 0.1 mg/dl (RUPP+edaravone) for
creatinine) and decreased cleaved
caspase-3 expression in the maternal kidney. In conclusion, this study demonstrated that our RUPP mice model recapitulated
preeclampsia symptoms and
edaravone injection ameliorated most of these abnormalities suggesting its effectiveness and potential application in
preeclampsia treatment regimes.