The recovery and protective effects of asiatic acid on differentiated human neuroblastoma SH-SY5Y cells cytotoxic-induced by cholesterol

Objective: To investigate the effect of asiatic acid (AA) on the differentiated human neuroblastoma SH-SY5Y cells cytotoxic-induced by cholesterol. Methods: Human neuroblastoma SH-SY5Y cells were either exposed to different concentrations of AA or treated with different doses of cholesterol to reveal their responding viability by MTT assay. The selective 1 mu mol/L concentration of AA was then used to test for either the protective or the recovery effects on the cells treated with 250 mu mol/L concentration of cholesterol. Results: AA has a propensity to directly increase the viability of differentiated human neuroblastoma SH-SY5Y cells. Cholesterol has significant cytotoxic effect on those cells in a concentration-dependent manner. AA has the ability to slightly recover the viability of the differentiated culture cytotoxic-induced by cholesterol but could not protect those cells from cytotoxic-induced by cholesterol. Conclusions: High concentrations of cholesterol were observed to be harmful to the neurons and AA had a slight effect of reducing neuronal death caused by cholesterol.