Tehran University of Medical Sciences Acta Medica Iranica 0044-6025 54 4 2016 05 10 245 250 EN Hamid Sohanaki Department of Physiology, School of Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. AND Department of Physiology, School of Medicine, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. Tourandokht Baluchnejadmojarad Department of Physiology, School of Medicine, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. Farnaz Nikbakht Department of Physiology, School of Medicine, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. Mehrdad Roghani Neurophysiology Research Center, Shahed University, Tehran, Iran. 2015 10 17 2015 10 17 Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a disorder with multiple pathophysiological causes, destructive outcomes, and no available definitive cure. Pelargonidin (Pel), an anthocyanin derivative, is an estrogen receptor agonist with little estrogen side effects. This study was designed to assess Pel memory enhancing effects on the a rat Amyloid Beta25-35 (Aβ) intrahippocampal microinjections model of AD in the passive avoidance task performance paradigm and further evaluate the potential estrogen receptor role on the memory-evoking compound. Equally divided rats were assigned to 5 groups of sham, Aβ intrahippocampal microinjected, Pel pretreated (10 mg/kg; P.O), α estrogen antagonist intra-cerebrovascular (i.c.v.) microinjected, and β estrogen antagonist (i.c.v) microinjected animals. Intrahippocampal microinjections of Aβ were adopted to provoke AD model. Passive avoidance task test was also used to assess memory performance. Pel pretreatment prior to Aβ microinjections significantly improved step-through latency (P<0.001) in passive avoidance test. In α and β estrogen, antagonists received animals, passive avoidance task performance was not statistically changed (P=0.11 & P=0.41 respectively) compared to Pel pretreated and sham animals. Our results depicted that Pel improves Aβ induced memory dysfunction in passive avoidance test performance through estrogen receptor independently related pathways. https://acta.tums.ac.ir/index.php/acta/article/view/4980 https://acta.tums.ac.ir/index.php/acta/article/download/4980/4776