Dissemination of refinements in mouse experimental stroke models to the scientific community.

在英国，脑中风是导致死亡的第三大原因，是导致成人严重残疾的主要原因，每年花费NHS约30亿英镑。产生新颖和合理的治疗方法是必不可少的。因此，每年都有成千上万的动物被用于模拟中风和研究潜在的治疗方法。小鼠通常用于中风模型的实验研究，尤其是因为它们对基因操作研究很有用。然而，使用实验中风模型的研究往往显示出产生的数据有很大的可变性。这通常会导致研究人员在每次研究中使用更多的动物，以试图发现显著的差异。我们提出，这种变异性的很大一部分可能是由于大脑血管解剖结构的差异，而我们之前开发的另一种方法可以减少所见的变异性。我们的目标是在科学界传播这种改进的方法，以便其他进行实验性中风研究的实验室将产生具有较小可变性的数据，从而减少在此类实验中使用的动物数量。

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 experimental stroke models tend to show a large variability in the data produced. This usually results in researchers using an increased number of animals per study in order to try and detect a significant difference. We proposed that a large portion of this variability may be due to differences in the anatomy of blood vessels in the brain and an alternative approach, which we have previously developed, reduces the variability seen. Our aim here is to disseminate this refined approach within the scientific community so that other labs performing experimental stroke studies will produce data with reduced variability and therefore reduce the number of animals used in such experiments.