[Extracellular acidification leads to reactive oxygene species formation in rat brain synaptosomes]

Formation of reactive oxygen species in rat brain synaptosomes was studied using DCFDA fluorescent dye at lowered extracellular pH. It has been shown that decrease in pH value from 7.4 to 7.0 and up to 6.0 leads to increase of fluorescence that is indicative of oxidative stress. The effect is observed regardless of whether Ca ions are present in incubation medium or no. Acidification of the incubation medium induces quenching of fluorescence of previously oxidized form of the dye in experiments without synaptosomes This evidences that increase of dye fluorescence is really associated with reactive oxygen species accumulation. Thus, it has been demonstrated that pH declined up to 7.0 in the incubation medium is sufficient to induce the formation of reactive oxygen species in synaptosomes.