A novel embolic stroke model resembling lacunar infarction following proximal middle cerebral artery occlusion in beagle dogs.
It is estimated that lacunar infarcts account for 25% of all ischemic strokes, but its exact etiology is still on debating. The existing controversies include whether the embolisms can indeed cause lacunar stroke in humans or animal models. We hypothesized that lacunar infarction can be induced by the proximal middle cerebral artery (MCA) segmental occlusion involving the orifices of lenticulostriate arteries in animal models, which have abundant distal cerebral collateral anastomosis. Our work here establishes a proximal MCA occlusion model using thrombi (autologous blood clots about 1.7 mm in diameter and 5 mm in length) in 8 beagle dogs, evaluates the progression of ischemic lesions at 30 min interval within 6 h after embolization using the diffusion weighted imaging (DWI), and discusses the potential mechanisms of lacunar infarction. Our results indicate that the left proximal MCAs can be successfully occluded in all dogs using interventional single-thrombus method. The small solitary or multiple ischemic lesions shown in DWI were observed in the deep brain area, with the mean detecting time of 1.21 ± 0.45 h using DWI and diameter of 6.62 ± 0.60mm in 6h-DWI after procedure. In conclusion, our method established an ischemic model which can recapitulate the radiologic and histologic changes in lacunar infarcts, suggesting that emboli can cause lacunar infarcts in animal model.
Department of Radiology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, Jiangsu 210029, China.
Sheng
S
Liu
Wei-Xing
WX
Hu
Qing-Quan
QQ
Zu
Shan-Shan
SS
Lu
Xiao-Quan
XQ
Xu
Lei
L
Sun
Wei-Zhong
WZ
Zhou
Hai-Bin
HB
Shi
D000818:Animals; D004195:Disease Models, Animal; D004285:Dogs; D005260:Female; D020244:Infarction, Middle Cerebral Artery / Q000150:complications* / Q000473:pathology*; D018810:Magnetic Resonance Angiography; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D059409:Stroke, Lacunar / Q000209:etiology* / Q000473:pathology*