| Abstract No.: | C-C3094 |
| Country: | Canada |
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| Title: | REHABILITATION FOLLOWING INTRACEREBRAL HEMORRHAGE IN RAT |
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| Authors/Affiliations: | 1 Angela Auriat*; 1 Frederick Colbourne;
1 University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada
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| Content: | Objectives: Intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) accounts for between 15-20% of all strokes, and often results in considerable functional deficits. Unfortunately, no effective treatment for ICH exists. Efforts must be made to develop therapies that can reduce the level of impairment seen in patients. Constraint induced movement therapy (CIMT) paired with rehabilitation training improves functional recovery and reduces lesion volume after striatal intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) in rats. However, this form of rehabilitation requires extensive training and animals must be individually housed. We assessed whether environmental enrichment (EE) combined with skilled reaching promotes recovery after ICH. This rehabilitation method allows for animals to be socially housed throughout the experiment.
Materials and Methods: Following behavioral training collagenase was stereotaxically injected into the rat’s striatum producing a moderate-sized hemorrhage. One week after the ICH rats were placed into a rehabilitation or control condition (standard group housing). Rehabilitation was given 5 days a week for 2 weeks and consisted of 15 hours of EE (including all 12 hours of the dark cycle) and four 15-minute reaching sessions (during the light cycle). Walking and skilled reaching were repeatedly assessed. Lesion volume, corpus callosum volume and cortical thickness were assessed using cresyl violet stained tissue 7 weeks following ICH.
Results: As we predicted, the rehabilitation treatment significantly improved outcome on skilled reaching at 4 and 7 weeks (p ≤ 0.002) and walking at 4 weeks (p = 0.021). Lesion volume was significantly reduced in the treatment group (32.22 vs 23.14 mm3 ; p = 0.019), although this effect could not be explained by differences in cortical thickness or corpus callosum volume and thus likely due to a neuroprotective effect in striatum.
Conclusion: The collagenase model of hemorrhage results in ongoing lesion growth, providing an ideal target for therapeutic interventions. Our intervention with skilled reaching and EE reduced lesion volume and improved functional recovery, however, the mechanisms responsible for this protection need to be investigated. If a similar maturation of injury occurs in patients, it is possible that the mechanisms identified with this model will lead to treatments that can improve outcome in stroke patients.
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