Prediction of stroke before and after unilateral occlusion of the common carotid artery in gerbils.

Abstract

A method was developed to predict the severity of cerebral ischemia before permanent occlusion of a common carotid artery in gerbils by observing the diameter and appearance of the artery after temporary occlusion and observing clinical signs after permanent occlusion. The severity of cerebral ischemia was confirmed by a sensitive immunohistochemical method and measurement of focal cerebral blood flow after 30 minutes' ischemia. All gerbils with > 40% reduction of the diameter and a white arterial margin distal to temporary occlusion developed severe neurologic signs following permanent occlusion, but no gerbils with reduction of <30% and a red arterial margin developed neurologic signs. With the cumulative neurologic score, gerbils could be divided into classes with no, mild, moderate, and severe symptoms, mostly after 10 minutes. Severely symptomatic gerbils were identified in 3 minutes. Extensive ischemic damage was observed in severely symptomatic gerbils, but no immunohistochemical lesion was detected in mildly symptomatic gerbils. Cerebral blood flow was markedly reduced in severely symptomatic gerbils but more selectively reduced in the cortical structures of moderately symptomatic gerbils. This prediction method is useful for investigating early cerebral ischemia and for evaluating the effectiveness of pharmacologic agents.

Direct Experimental Occlusion of the Distal Middle Cerebral Artery Induces High Reproducibility of Brain Ischemia in Mice

“…The unilateral CCAO method, which we performed for proximal artery occlusion, is used for Mongolian gerbils [11,14,20]. Mongolian gerbils lack PcomA necessary to complete the Circle of Willis, so this species has frequently been used to produce ischemic models [26].…”

Cerebral blood flow and neuronal damage during progressive cerebral ischemia in gerbils.

“…213 Therefore, assessment of the correlation between reduction of cerebral perfusion and induction of irreversible neuronal damage required the measurement of local CBF soon after CCA occlusion, before any morphologic damage emerged. A method to preselect uniformly symptomatic gerbils 7 and a method combining quantitative autoradiography and immunohistochemistry 6 enabled us to carry out this task.…”

Ischemic depolarization monitoring: evaluation of protein synthesis in the hippocampal CA1 after brief unilateral ischemia in a gerbil model

“…Laas 17 measured arterial blood pressure distal to the CCA ligation and correlated it with clinical and histopathological outcome. Matsumoto, et al, 20 reported a correlation between neurological outcome and reduction in the size or appearance of the margin of the CCA distal to the occlusion. In our study, 37.5% of animals subjected to ischemia showed depolarization.…”