Determining the source of variability within experimental stroke models

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In the UK, cerebral stroke is the 3rd cause of death, the leading cause of severe adult disability in adults and costs the NHS an estimated £3 billion per year. The generation of novel and rational therapeutics is essential. Thus, every year thousands of animals are used experimentally to model stroke and investigate potential therapies. Mice are commonly used in experimental studies aimed at modelling stroke not least because they are useful for genetic manipulation studies. However, studies using eperimental stroke models tend to show a large variabiity in the data produced. This usually results in researchers using increased number of animals per study in order to try and detect a significant difference. We propose that a large portion of this variability may be due to differences in the anatomy of blood vessels in the brain. Such variability has been well documented in anatomical studies and we propose here the introduction of a non-invasive screening process whereby those animal with the highest degree of variability can be excluded from studies prior to them undergoing experimental stroke. Thus, this should reduce the variability in data obtained from using experimetnal stroke models and therefore reduce the number of animals undergoing such procedures. In addition, we intend to deternine with a variation in the established protocol for inducing experimental stroke can also result in a reduction in the variability of data and therefore reduce the number of animals used in such experiments.