rhMFG-E8 promotes neurological recovery and neural stem cell proliferation after cerebral ischemia.

(A) Treatment of rats with rhMFG-E8 significantly decreased neurological deficits at 7 days post-transient middle cerebral artery occlusion (tMCAO) compared with vehicle. Data are presented as mean ± SEM; n = 3 mice/group. The statistical analysis was done by One way Anova and Student-Newman-Keuls (SNK) test. *p<0.05 is considered as statistically significant. (B) Body weight changes of rats within 7 days after tMCAO. Both vehicle and rhMFG-E8-treated groups started to lose weight until day 2 post-tMCAO, at which point the weight of vehicle animals plateaued and rhMFG-E8-treated animals begun to gain weight slowly. Data are presented as mean ± SEM; n = 3 mice/group. The statistical analysis was done by One way Anova and Student-Newman-Keuls (SNK) test. *p<0.05 vs sham; #p<0.05 vs vehicle. (C) The striatum of sham rats (a-d) shows very little baseline neural stem cell proliferative activity as shown by BrdU+Nestin+ cells. At 7 days post-tMCAO, compared with the vehicle treated animals (e-h), rhMFG-E8 treated rats showed increased number of proliferating neural stem cells (i-l). Scale bar = 100 μm.