Fig. 2.

Early brain damage analysis and neurological score assessment. At 48 h after injury both vehicle and delayed-IL-1Ra treated animals showed similar infarct volume (A). Damage was mainly localized to the striatum and remote injury was seen in the substantia nigra, as seen on representative images from T₂-weighted MRI (white arrow, B). Acute administration of IL-1Ra decreased infarct volume and protected against remote damage (C) although delayed administration of IL-1Ra showed both striatal and substantia nigra damage as did vehicle treated (D). Weight loss at 24 h after injury (E) and neurological score assessment (F) showed that vehicle-treated and delayed-IL-1Ra treated animals performed worse. Data presented as mean ± SEM. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001 using Kruskal–Wallis with Dunn's post-test (n = 5–10).