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Updated: Aug 18, 2026
Focal Cerebral Ischemia Model by Endovascular Suture Occlusion of the Middle Cerebral Artery in the Rat
Published on: February 5, 2011
Alteration of basic fibroblast growth factor expression in rat during cerebral ischemia
1National Key Laboratory of Medical Neurobiology, Department of Neurobiology, Shanghai Medical University, Shanghai 200032, China.
Aim:
To investigate the distribution and expression changes of basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF)-like immunoreactivity (IR) in focal cerebral ischemic rat brain.
Methods:
The expression of bFGF was observed by fluoro-immunohistochemistry. The focal cerebral ischemic injury was carried out using middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) model.
Results:
Confocal images demonstrated that both the striatum and the frontoparietal cortex showed increases of bFGF-like IR after 2-h MCAO and 24-h reperfusion. In striatum, the increase patterns of bFGF-like IR were different according to the ischemic extent. In the core of infarct and its surrounding region (with more IR induction), bFGF-like IR was mainly located in astrocytes. In region adjacent to infarct (with most IR induction, the grey ratio of bFGF-like IR increased from sham-98% +/- 10% to ischemia-125% +/- 6%), some neurons also showed an upregulation of bFGF-like IR. In frontoparietal cortex, strong induction of bFGF-like IR was mostly seen in neurons (The grey ratio of bFGF-like IR increased from sham-104% +/- 11% to ischemia-132% +/- 28%), although it was observed in astrocytes as well.
Conclusion:
The expression of bFGF increased after focal cerebral ischemia in rats, suggesting that: in striatum, astrocytes may play an important role in the protection of neurons via the overexpression of bFGF; whereas in cortex, neurons probably exert an autoprotection through expressing bFGF themselves.
