ABSTRACT
MRI has become a standard method to evaluate the extend of injury in the brain after stroke and
possibly guide treatments. This proposal aims to: i) develop and implement novel multiparametric MRI
methods to determine viability tissue status and to investigate therapeutic effects, ii) to apply these methods to
evaluate the efficacy for hydrogen water, minocycline, and combination of hydrogen water and minocycline
treatment in the established rat stroke model.
Part one involves development of sophisticated multimodal MRI acquisition and analysis methods to
longitudinally characterize and track tissue viability, cerebral functional status, and cerebral vascular reactivity,
beyond infarct volume. Part two involves their applications to investigate the efficacy for hydrogen water,
minocycline, and combination of hydrogen water and minocycline treatment. Hydrogen or minocycline
individually has been shown to be neuroprotective in experimental ischemic stroke as well as other
neurological disorders. We recently found that the combination of hydrogen water and minocycline markedly
reduces MRI-defined lesion volume, gray-matter cytotoxicity, white-matter damage, and behavioral deficits in
rats after transient (90-min) middle cerebral artery occlusion.
Our central hypothesis is that hydrogen water treatment reduces infarct size, vascular health, and
improves functional recovery as detected by MRI, and the combined hydrogen water and minocycline further
results in superior efficacy.