Figure 1.

Ex-4 protects against the increase in retinal vascular leakage triggered by IR. Rats were treated twice daily with a subcutaneous injection of Ex-4 (10 μg/kg), with two initial administrations prior to ischemia and injections every 12 hours for the next 48 hours during the reperfusion period. Nontreated animals received saline vehicle injections. One eye of each animal was subjected to retinal ischemia for 45 minutes, followed by natural reperfusion. The contralateral eyes were subjected to needle puncture and served as sham controls. Evans Blue dye was injected in the tail vein and allowed to circulate 2 hours before flushing and determination of dye accumulation in retinal tissue. Data are expressed as mean ± SEM (n = 16 retinas per group). ***P < 0.001. ns, nonsignificant. One-way ANOVA followed by Bonferroni's post hoc test.