Bilateral Carotid Artery Stenosis and Cerebral Blood Flow Outcomes

Bilateral carotid artery stenosis (BCAS) is a valid approach for modeling vascular dementia (VaD) in mice as it induces cerebral hypoperfusion and produces white matter degeneration and cognitive impairment. VaD is one of the major causes of cognitive impairment and currently has no approved therapy; hence its preclinical modeling is warranted for investigating potential therapeutic compounds. BCAS enables the characterization of brain pathology and associated cognitive phenotype of VaD. In this chapter, we describe the surgical method of inducing BCAS in mice, using titanium micro-coils, and we report cerebral blood flow changes before and after surgical induction as well as some histological findings in the corpus callosum of diabetic mice subjected to long-term BCAS.