Objectives: 

Aging is associated with an altered cerebral homeostasis which appears to be in females mainly related to a decrease in estrogen plasma levels. Because of this, the aim of this work was to evaluate if 17beta-estradiol and/or genistein, a natural selective estrogen receptor modulator, were able to improve the brain homeostasis deteriorated by aging.

Materials: 

In order to investigate this issue, young and aged female Wistar rats were ovariectomized and treated acutely with 17beta-estradiol (1.4mg/kg body weight), two different doses of genistein (10 or 40mg/kg body weight), or vehicle. The cerebral cortex was dissected and processed to perform western blot analysis against glucose transporter-3 and -4, and cytochrome c oxidase. Statistical analysis was carried out through One Way Analysis of Variance.

Results: 

We have seen that both treatments were able to restore Glut-3 levels decreased in the cerebral cortex after early and late gonadal function loss. However, Glut-4 levels only could be completely restored by high genistein doses in aged rats. On the contrary, estradiol seemed to be a better treatment to increase the cerebral oxidative metabolism, measured by cytochrome c oxidase, in the elderly.

Conclusions: 

Taking into account all our data, estradiol and genistein acute treatments seem to be suitable in rats to improve some brain homeostasis aspects deteriorated by aging.