Nicardipine, a calcium antagonist, does not aggravate intracerebral haemorrhage in an intracerebral haemorrhage model in rats

Abstract

Despite controversy over their safety in patients with intracerebral haemorrhage, calcium antagonists are widely used in the treatment of hypertensive emergencies. Here, we investigated the effects of nicardipine on haematoma size and neurological deficit in a rat model of collagenase-induced intracerebral haemorrhage. Injection of collagenase (0.014 U) into the striatum induced haematoma (19.9+/-3.4 mm(3)) in the striatum and brain oedema. Drugs were infused from 30 min after collagenase injection for 3 h under conscious conditions. Nicardipine intravenously at 0.1, 1 and 10 microg kg(-1) min(-1) affected neither haematoma size nor the degree of brain oedema. Nicardipine at these doses provided a stable and dose-dependent decrease in mean blood pressure of 6%, 13% and 33%, respectively, with an increase in heart rate that was apparently caused reflexively. Further, nicardipine did not aggravate the neurological deficits in these intracerebral haemorrhage rats, primarily forearm flexion behaviour on suspension by the tail and circling behaviour. These results indicate that nicardipine infusion stably decreased blood pressure without affecting intracerebral haemorrhage in an intracerebral haemorrhage model in rats.

Treatment of intracerebral hemorrhage in animal models: Meta‐analysis

“…We excluded 10 studies because ICH was not induced using collagenase or autologous blood injection,16–18 outcome data could not be extracted or obtained,19 variance values of zero precluded meta‐analysis,20, 21 or interventions were administered before the induction of ICH22–25 (although we included 3 of these studies in a post hoc sensitivity analysis24–26). After corresponding authors clarified the data in 2 studies,27, 28 we included 88 studies reporting 151 different treatment comparisons (87 of which had sham groups) that described the effects of nonsurgical interventions on neurobehavioral outcome in 2,616 treated or control rodents with ICH (Supporting Information Table 1) 26–113…”

Behavioral Assessment of Sensory, Motor, Emotion, and Cognition in Rodent Models of Intracerebral Hemorrhage

“…The application of emotion-related behavioral tests in preclinical ICH research will help with the screening of potential therapeutics for treating post-ICH depression. Through PubMed research, however, we identified only five research papers in which the depression-like behaviors were studied in rodents with ICH ( 56 , 57 , 75 , 88 , 169 ). Based on the fact that we know very little about post-ICH depression-like behaviors in rodents, more research into this new area is strongly recommended.…”