Abstract:To discuss the influence of subanesthesia, sedation and anesthesia doses of Propofol on learning and memory functions, hippocampal tissues in rats with hyperlipidemia. Methods Totally 65 healthy adult male SD rats were randomly divided into basic diet group (15 rats) and high-fat diet group (50 rats). After 6 weeks of feeding, 10 rats were used for measurement of blood lipids. The 40 rats of successful model were randomly divided into 4 groups. Group A had intraperitoneal injection of saline 75 mg/kg; groups B, C and D were anesthetized by intraperitoneal injection of subanesthetic (10 mg/kg), sedation (30 mg/kg) and anesthetic (375 mg/kg) doses of 1% Propofol for 5 consecutive days. Morris water maze training was carried out and spatial memory was measured 20 min and 6 -7 days after drug administration. On the 8th day after the first administration, the hippocampal tissues were obtained to measure the level of Tau protein phosphorylation, caspase-3 expression level and γ-amino butyric acid (GABA) level. Results With the increase of the days of drug administration and training,the escape latency was significantly shortened in the 4 groups (p < 0.05). The escape latency in the groups C and Dat different time points was significantly longer than that in the groups A and B (p < 0.05), and the escape latency in the group D was significantly longer than that in the group C ( p< 0.05). In the search space experiments on the 7th day, the platform-crossing times of the groups C and D were significantly fewer than those of the group A and B (p <0.05), and the platform-crossing times of the group D were significantly fewer than those of the group C (p < 0.05);the GABA content of the hippocampal tissues and the average optical density of positive cells were significantly higher in the groups C and D than in the groups A and B (p < 0.05), and significantly higher in the group D than in the group C (p < 0.05). Conclusions Sedation and anesthesia doses of Propofol can reduce the spatial memory in hyperlipidemia rats, which may be associated with high levels of GABA in hippocampus and Tau protein hyperphosphorylation.