Icariin protects against intracerebral hemorrhage in mice by enhancing neuroprotection
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background Intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) is a major type of stroke associated with high rates of mortality and long-term disability, often leading to inflammation, brain edema, and neuronal loss. Icariin (ICA) is the primary active compound extracted from Herba epimedii, and it possesses several pharmacological effects including anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and anti-apoptotic properties. However, its neuroprotective capacity and mechanisms in ICH remain unknown. This study investigates the neuroprotective potential of ICA in an ICH mouse model. Methods A total of 108 C57BL/6 mice were randomly assigned to three groups: sham group ( n = 36), ICH + vehicle group ( n = 36), and ICH + ICA group ( n = 36). ICH was induced in the ICH + Vehicle and ICH + ICA groups through injection of collagenase type VII into the basal ganglia. The ICH + ICA group was administered ICA (60 mg/kg/day) intraperitoneally for three consecutive days. Neurological assessment was conducted using the corner test and modified neurological severity scores. TUNEL (terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase-mediated dUTP nick end-labeling) staining was performed to evaluate brain cell death. Brain water content, Western blot, Evans blue (EB) dye extravasation, and immunofluorescence staining were conducted 3 days post-ICH. Results ICA treatment significantly alleviated brain edema and enhanced neurological function in mice three days post-ICH. Immunofluorescence results revealed that ICA decreased microglia and astrocyte activation and reduced neutrophil infiltration. Western blot results demonstrated that ICA maintained blood-brain barrier (BBB) integrity by decreasing the loss of tight junction proteins, including Occludin and Zonula occludens-1. ICA also lowered matrix metalloproteinase-9 and the proinflammatory cytokines tumor necrosis factor-α and interleukin-1β. TUNEL staining showed a reduction in neuronal cell death with ICA, linked to enhanced level of the anti-apoptotic B-cell lymphoma 2 (Bcl-2) protein and reduced expression of the pro-apoptotic Bcl-2-associated X (Bax) protein. Conclusion ICA exhibits significant neuroprotective effects in mice following ICH by reducing neuroinflammation, maintaining BBB integrity, and attenuating brain cell death.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".