Fig. 2: Inhibition of adult hippocampal neurogenesis by temozolomide suppresses the antidepressant and neurogenic effects of lactate in the corticosterone model of depression.

a Timeline showing the experimental design. Mice received an intraperitoneal injection of temozolomide (TMZ) (25 mg/kg) on the first 3 days of a week for 4 consecutive weeks. On the second week of TMZ treatment, mice received a daily subcutaneous injection of vehicle or corticosterone (20 mg/kg) and an intraperitoneal injection of vehicle (NaCl 0.9%) or lactate (1 g/kg) for 21 consecutive days. On the last day of treatment, mice received BrdU injections. b Confocal maximal projection micrographs of hippocampal sections immunostained for BrdU. Inset: Higher magnification confocal micrograph of a BrdU-immunolabeled group of cells. c Analysis of neural progenitor cells (NPCs) proliferation. Histogram of the number of BrdU⁺ cells in the granule cell layer of the dentate gyrus. d Assessment of depressive-like behavior in FST. Histogram of the time spent immobile during FST. e Assessment of depressive-like behavior in TST. Histogram of the time spent immobile during TST. f Assessment of anhedonia-like behavior in the saccharin preference test. Data are the mean ± SEM. One-way ANOVA followed by Tukey post-hoc test ((c): n = 7/condition; (d): n = 8/condition; (e): n = 11/condition, (f): n = 6/condition). *p < 0.05.