%0 Journal Article
%T Treatment with the immunomodulator FTY720 does not promote spontaneous bacterial infections after experimental stroke in mice
%A Waltraud Pfeilschifter
%A Bo£¿ena Czech-Zechmeister
%A Marian Sujak
%A Christian Foerch
%A Thomas A Wichelhaus
%A Josef Pfeilschifter
%J Experimental & Translational Stroke Medicine
%D 2011
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/2040-7378-3-2
%X Middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) in C57BL/6 mice (strain J, groups of 10 animals) was performed with two different durations of ischemia (90 min and 3 h) and FTY720 was applied 2 h after vessel occlusion to study the impact of reperfusion on the protective potency of FTY720. Lesion size was determined by TTC staining. Mice treated with FTY720 or vehicle were sacrificed 48 h after 90 min MCAO to determine the bacterial burden in lung and blood.FTY720 1 mg/kg significantly reduced ischemic lesion size when administered 2 h after the onset of MCAO for 3 h (45.4 ¡À 22.7 mm3 vs. 84.7 ¡À 23.6 mm3 in control mice, p = 0.001) and also when administered after reperfusion, 2 h after the onset of MCAO for 90 min (31.1 ¡À 28.49 mm3 vs. 69.6 ¡À 27.2 mm3 in control mice, p = 0.013). Bacterial burden of lung homogenates 48 h after stroke did not increase in the group treated with the immunomodulator FTY720 while there was no spontaneous bacteremia 48 h after MCAO in treated and untreated animals.Our results corroborate the experimental evidence of the protective effect of FTY720 seen in different rodent stroke models. Interestingly, we found no increase in bacterial lung infections even though FTY720 strongly reduces the number of circulating leukocytes.Despite decades of basic and translational research, there is still no pharmaceutical stroke treatment besides thrombolysis which has been proven to be effective in humans [1]. To promote the transition of scientific evidence from animal studies on experimental stroke, the Stroke Therapy Academic Industry Roundtable (STAIR) has formulated a set of criteria for the conduct, reporting, and analysis of animal data which include the points that drug candidates should be tried by different research teams, in different stroke models, in different animal species, and at different time points [2]. One drug, which has recently gained a lot of interest and already fulfils some of these criteria on the basis of the current experimental evi
%U http://www.etsmjournal.com/content/3/1/2