Studies of Perinatal Asphyxial Brain Injury in the Fetal Sheep

In order to develop more effective ways of identifying, managing, and treating perinatal asphyxial brain injury, stable experimental models are essential. Although the outcome of clinical asphyxia is highly variable, modern imaging studies have distinguished two major patterns of injury in term infants, involving primary damage in either the parasagittal cortex or in the basal ganglia respectively. The present review describes the experimental preparation in detail, and the key experimental factors that determine the pattern and severity of brain injury in chronically instrumented fetal sheep, including the depth (“severity”), duration, and repetition of the insult, the maturity, and condition of the fetus. These models are valuable to dissect the pathogenesis of key clinical patterns of brain injury in a stable thermal and biochemical environment, and to test therapeutic interventions.
Source: Springer protocols feed by Neuroscience - Category: Neuroscience Source Type: news