Role of Vitexin Liposomes in Treatment of Depression

Abstract

In this study, the antidepressant impact of vitexin liposomes is inspected in depression models in vivo. Depression is a very predominant and incapacitating condition, which is not completely manageable by the drugs currently available in the market. Numerous patients do not respond to available treatments or show partial response which arises the need for other better therapeutic choices. Vitexin is inadequately absorbed by the gastrointestinal tract and therefore to increase bioavailability and for vitexin to show any effectiveness against depression we synthesize liposomes. To test the ability of these synthesized liposomes, animal model is used. First, depression is induced through the unpredictable chronic mild stress (UCMS) protocol, in mice. In this procedure, young mice are incessantly presented with unpredictable mild stressors. UCMS can be utilized for screenings of antidepressants on an assortment of depressive-like behaviors. Then, the tail suspension test (TST), the forced swim test (FST) and open field test (OFT), are utilized to determine depressive symptoms in two stages, after induction of depression and after treatment. UCMS is the preferred protocol for inducing depression because of its capacity to impel long-term behavioral discrepancies and then allowing these behavioral short-comings to be reversed by chronic therapy. Following fruitful induction of depression, simple vitexin and vitexin liposomes (250 μg and 500 μg) are injected intravenously, testing and investigation is performed which demonstrated that vitexin loaded liposomes are a superior method of treatment for depression. The results show that neither simple vitexin nor vitexin liposomes caused any cytotoxicity at any given dose. The 500 μg dose gave the best results, almost close to those of control, followed by the 250 μg dosage which gave positive results but not as good as the higher dose.