The Inhibitory Effect of EPO on Injury from Inflammation of Cerebral Ischemia-reperfusion

ZHAO Defu; NING Xianzhong

Abstract：Objective To investigate the influence of EPO on the expression of NF-κB and COX-2 in model rats with focal cere-bral ischemia-reperfusion, and to explore whether EPO has any inhibitory effect on the inflammation. Methods 70 healthy SD rats were selected and divided into 5 groups: control, ischemia-reperfusion, EPO, PTDC and PDTC+EPO group. All the brain tissue specimens obtained after the handling of the rats were used to analyze the difference in the expression of NF-κB and COX-2 in the hip-pocampus of the rats with the method of immunohistochemistry and Western Blot. Results In comparison with those of the ischemia-reperfusion group, the neurological score of the rats in other groups significantly decreased (P<0. 01) and the expression of both NF-κB and COX-2 declined remarkably (P<0. 01), the expression of the latter one in the PDTC group still higher than that of the con-trol group (P<0. 01) . The neurological score and the expression of COX-2 of the rats in the EPO and the PDTC+EPO groups both declined obviously compared with those of the PDTC group ( P<0. 01 ) . There was no statistically significant difference in the neuro-logical score and COX-2 expression between the EPO and the PDTC+EPO groups ( P>0. 05 ) . Conclusions The experiment sug-gests that it is by 2 ways that EPO reduces the expression of COX-2 in the hippocampus of the rats with focal cerebral ischemi-reperfu-sion injury in order to exert the inhibitory effect on the inflammation of the injury.