Objective To investigate the effects of resveratrol pretreatment on neurite growth of rat primary cortical neurons after oxygen-glucose deprivation/reperfusion (OGD/R) injury in vitro. Methods Primary cortical neurons were cultured under oxygen and glucose deprivation for 150 minutes and reoxygenation for 24 hours. The study had the normal, control and 5μmol /L resveratrol pretreatment groups. Neurons were identified with immunofluorescence. Cell viability was detected with cell counting kit-8(CCK-8) assay. Cell apoptosis was detected with TUNEL assay. Immunofluorescence and Western blotting measured the expressions of microtubule-associated protein 2（MAP-2）and growth associated protein 43（GAP-43）, and the length and number of neurites were counted.
Results Cells had high expression of neuronal specific marker MAP-2. Compared with the control group, resveratrol treatment significantly enhanced the neurons viability (0.551±0.009 vs 0.436±0.013,P<0.01), decreased the numbers of apoptosis (18.3%±1.3% vs 35.3%±1.9%,P<0.01), upregulated the expressions of MAP-2 (0.790±0.102 vs 0.462±0.063,P<0.01) and GAP-43 (0.768±0.084 vs 0.424±0.065,P<0.01) proteins, increased the length (89.510±6.939 vs 61.538±9.14,P<0.01) and numbers (6.347±1.002 vs 3.040±0.608,P<0.01) of neurites. Conclusion Resveratrol pretreatment can reduce injury and promote neurite growth of cultured neurons after OGD/R.