Comparative outcome in acute stroke model after hypoxia and exercise

Abstract

Obstructive sleep apnea and exercise and have conflicting effect on the ischemic stroke. Obstructive sleep apnea has negative effect on ischemic stroke, but exercise prevents and protects deficit from ischemic stroke. In this study, we show that chronic hypoxia and exercise result differently in mice ischemia model. Chronic hypoxia resulted in high mortality in acute period after carotid occlusion compared with the control group, and showed worse neurological outcome compared with the control group in hyper-acute stroke period (24 h after ischemia) in neurological scoring. Exercise group showed better neurological outcome compared with the control group in acute stroke period (up to 3 days after ischemia) in neurological scoring and Y-maze tests, but the infarction size was not definitely smaller in exercise group (P = 0.051, mean 57% reduction), although the tendency was positive. The amount of exercise was correlated with the neurological outcome in Y-maze test. These results show that chronic hypoxia might lead to poor outcome after ischemic stroke, whereas exercise can have importance role in reducing the neurological deficit by acute ischemic stroke.