Effect of chronic methylphenidate treatment on hippocampal neurovascular unit and memory performance in late adolescent rats

Abstract Methylphenidate (MPH) is the classic treatment for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) among children and adults. Despite its beneficial effects, non-medical use of MPH is nowadays a problem with high impact on society. Thus, our goal was to uncover the neurovascular and cognitive effects of MPH chronic use during a critical period of development in control conditions. For that, male Wistar Kyoto rats were treated with MPH (1.5 or 5 mg/kg/day at weekdays, per os) from P28 to P55. We concluded that the higher dose of MPH caused hippocampal blood-brain barrier (BBB) hyperpermeability by vesicular transport (transcytosis) concomitantly with the presence of peripheral immune cells in the brain parenchyma. These observations were confirmed by in vitro studies, in which the knockdown of caveolin-1 in human brain endothelial cells prevented the increased permeability and leukocytes transmigration triggered by MPH (100 µM, 24 h). Furthermore, MPH led to astrocytic atrophy and to a decrease in the levels of several synaptic proteins and impairment of AKT/CREB signaling, together with working memory deficit assessed in the Y-maze test. On the contrary, we verified that the lower dose of MPH (1.5 mg/kg/day) increased astrocytic processes and upregulated several neuronal proteins as well as signaling pathways involved in synaptic plasticity culminating in working memory improvement. In conclusion, the present study reveals that a lower dose of MPH in normal rats improves memory performance being associated with the modulation of astrocytic morphology and synaptic machinery. However, a higher dose of MPH leads to BBB dysfunction and memory impairment.