Depression has several negative effects on social relationship as well as learning and memory abilities. Previous studies showed that depression can exacerbate inflammation, which in turn further aggravate depression. Deferoxamine (DFO) which is a clinical medicine has been suggested to reduce inflammation and protect against mania. Here, we established a chronic unpredictable mild stress (CUMS) model to investigate whether DFO exerts a neuroprotective function in depression. Sucrose preference test was performed during the model establishing period. The anxiety-like and depression-like behaviors were measured by forced swimming test (FST), open-field test (OFT) as well as elevated plus-maze test (EPT). Spatial cognitions were evaluated by Morris water maze test (MWM). Further, both long-term potentiation (LTP) and depotentiation (LTD) were recorded in the hippocampal dentate gyrus (DG) region. Results showed that DFO effectively alleviated anxiety-like as well as depression-like behaviors and partially rescued the cognition impairments caused by CUMS model. Additionally, the decrease of dendritic spine density in the hippocampus DG region was mitigated by DFO. Western blot assay indicated that inflammation was ameliorated. Together, these findings suggest that DFO plays a protective role in cognitive impairments and synaptic plasticity deficits resulting from depression by diminishing inflammation.

deferoxamine,chronic unpredictable mild stress,synaptic plasticity,Inflammation