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Improvement of cerebral ischemia–reperfusion injury by l-3-n-butylphthalide through promoting angiogenesis

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Abstract

Cerebral ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury may lead to a poor prognosis for ischemic stroke patients after reperfusion therapy, and currently, lacks effective therapeutic intervention. This study aimed to investigate the effects of l-3-n-butylphthalide (L-NBP) on cerebral I/R injury in rats. Rat models of cerebral I/R injury were established using the middle cerebral artery occlusion/refusion (MACO/R) surgery and were administrated intragastrically with L-NBP or vehicle. We found that L-NBP attenuated the histological damages and reduced the brain hematoma in MACO/R rats. L-NBP also significantly improved the neurological function, alleviated the brain edema, and reduced the permeability of blood–brain barrier of MACO/R rats. Moreover, we detected that L-NBP considerably facilitated microvessel formation in the lesion area of brain in MACO/R rats. Finally, we found that L-NBP significantly increased the protein and mRNA expression levels of Nrf2, HIF-1α, and VEGF in the brain of MACO/R rats. In conclusion, our results demonstrated that L-NBP exerted significant beneficial effects on cerebral I/R injury in rats through promoting angiogenesis, which may be associated with the activation of Nrf2/HIF-1α/VEGF signaling pathway. Our results suggested that L-NBP could be a potential therapeutic drug for cerebral I/R injury.

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The datasets used and/or analyzed are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Pharmacy, The People’s Hospital of Yichun City, Yichun, 336000, People’s Republic of China

    Ying Huang & Ting Wu

  2. Department of Neurology, The People’s Hospital of Yichun City, Yichun, 336000, People’s Republic of China

    Lishou Pan

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  1. Ying Huang
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  2. Lishou Pan
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  3. Ting Wu
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Contributions

HY conducted the experiments, analyzed the data, and wrote the original draft. PLS contributed to data analysis. WT designed the experiments and revised the original draft.

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Correspondence to Ting Wu.

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Communicated by Sreedharan Sajikumar.

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Huang, Y., Pan, L. & Wu, T. Improvement of cerebral ischemia–reperfusion injury by l-3-n-butylphthalide through promoting angiogenesis. Exp Brain Res 239, 341–350 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-020-05978-6

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