Neurosteroids Decrease Inflammation and Coagulation after Brain Injury

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Neurosteroids Decrease Inflammation and
Coagulation after Brain Injury

• Elina Tavrovsky
• Institute on Neuroscience, Emory University

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Traumatic Brain Injury

• Chemical imbalance, oxidative damage, immune cell
  invasion
• Inflammation, cell death, oxidative stress

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Stroke

• Ischemic stroke occurs when an artery to the
  brain is blocked
• cell excitotoxicity, inflammation, edema
  formation, apoptosis, and necrosis

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Progesterone and Allopregnanolone

• Neurosteroids affect synaptic functioning, are
  neuroprotective, and affect myelinization.
• It is being investigated for their potential to
  improve memory and cognitive ability.
• Progesterone is a neuroprotectant

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Decay Accelerating Factor(DAF)

• Anti inflammatory
• Inhibitor of C3 and C4 convertase
• Antioxidant

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Thrombin

• Very important for clotting
• Conversion of fibrinogen to fibrin

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Methods and Materials

• Surgeries
• Western Blot
• Real Time- Polymerase Chain Reaction

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Surgery

• In all surgeries the rats were anesthetized with
  isofluourane
• Made sure to clean the area of incision
• Put in stereotaxic device
• Constantly monitored their temperature, heart
  rate and breathing

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Traumatic Brain Injury
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Stroke
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Analysis

• Both Prog and Allo increased DAF protein
  expression
• Allo had low gene expression
• Allo had less expression in TBI and Stroke models
• Allo is better for stroke models because it
  reduces thrombin expression
• Prog is better for TBI models because it
  increases DAF expression

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Resources

• http//www.strokecenter.org
• www.ne.jp/asahi/ueda/ stroke/thrombolysis-1.html
• caltechgirlsworld.blogspot.com/

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Acknowledgements

• Thanks to everyone in the lab
• Especially, thanks to Dr. Stein, Jake, Ebony,
  Yusef, Sarah, and Iqbal
• Thanks Renee and Nelson for being so patient with
  everyone in the program
• Thanks to my wonderful parents, sister and Grandma