Stroke is despite of progressive improvements in treatment and
reperfusion strategies one of the most devastating human
pathology. However, as quality of acute health care improves and
more people survive ischemic attack, healthcare specialists have
to solve new challenges to preserve reasonable quality of life to
these patients. Thus, novel approaches which prevents
comorbidities of stroke and improve quality of life of stroke
survivors in general has to be developed and experimentally
tested. The aim of the present paper was to establish reliable rat
model of middle cerebral occlusion and set of methods allowing
selection of animals suitable for long-term experiments. We have
compared mortality rates, cerebral blood flow and extension of
ischemic lesion induced by intraluminal filament in three widely
used outbred rat strains. We have additionally used an animal
18F-DG PET scans to verify its reliability in noninvasive detection
of ischemic infarct in acute period (24 h after MCAO) for selecting
animals eligible for long survival experiments. Our data clearly
indicates that high variability between rat strains might
negatively influence stroke induction by intraluminal thread
occlusion of middle cerebral artery. Most reliable outbred rat
strain in our hands was Sprague-Dawley where maximal
reduction of cerebral blood flow and extensive ischemic lesion
was observed. Contrary, Wistar rats exhibited higher mortality
and Long-Evans rats significantly smaller or no ischemic region in
comparison to Sprague-Dawley. Additionally, we have confirmed
a positron emission tomography with 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose as
suitable method to assess extension of ischemic region in acute
period after the experimental arterial occlusion in rats.