title: Autonomic reactions and peri-interventional alterations in body weight as potential supplementary outcome parameters for thromboembolic stroke in rats.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Since several neuroprotectives failed to reproduce promising preclinical results under clinical conditions, efforts emerged to implement clinically relevant endpoints in animal stroke studies. Thereby, insufficient attention was given on autonomic reactions due to experimental stroke, although clinical trials reported on high functional and prognostic impact. This study focused on autonomic consequences and body weight changes in a translational relevant stroke model and investigated interrelations to different outcome measurements.
  
  
  METHODS
  Forty-eight rats underwent thromboembolic middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) while recording heart rate (HR) and mean arterial pressure (MAP). After assessing early functional impairment (Menzies score), animals were assigned to control procedure or potentially neuroprotective treatment with normobaric (NBO) or hyperbaric oxygen (HBO). Four or 24 hours after ischemia onset, functional impairment was re-assessed and FITC-albumin administered intravenously obtaining leakage-related blood-brain barrier (BBB) impairment. Body weight was documented prior to MCAO and 4 or 24 hours after ischemia onset.
  
  
  RESULTS
  During MCAO, HR was found to increase significantly while MAP decreased. The amount of changes in HR was positively correlated with early functional impairment (P = 0.001): Severely affected animals provided an increase of 15.2 compared to 0.8 beats/minute in rats with low impairment (P = 0.048). Regarding body weight, a decrease of 9.4% within 24 hours after MCAO occurred, but treatment-specific alterations showed no significant correlations with respective functional or BBB impairment.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Future studies should routinely include autonomic parameters to allow inter-group comparisons and better understanding of autonomic reactions due to experimental stroke. Prospectively, autonomic consequences might represent a useful outcome parameter enhancing the methodological spectrum of preclinical stroke studies.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, University of Leipzig, Liebigstr, 20, 04103, Leipzig, Germany. dominik.michalski@medizin.uni-leipzig.de.
authors.forename: Dominik
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Michalski
authors.forename: Christopher
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Weise
authors.forename: Carsten
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Hobohm
authors.forename: Lea
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Küppers-Tiedt
authors.forename: Johann
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Pelz
authors.forename: Dietmar
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Schneider
authors.forename: Johannes
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kacza
authors.forename: Wolfgang
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Härtig