Journal of neurotrauma
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Journal of neurotrauma · Jan 1997
Metabolic quantification of lesion volume following experimental traumatic brain injury in the rat.
A reliable and rapid method for quantifying lesion volume following traumatic brain injury (TBI) has vast potential in brain injury research. Staining with 2, 3, 5-triphenyltetrazolium chloride (TTC) provides for demarcation of damaged or infarcted tissue from normal, viable cerebral tissue, in which a red formazan product is formed by reduction during cellular respiration of mitochondrial dehydrogenase enzymes. The present study evaluated the use of TTC staining to quantify the cortical lesion volume in rats undergoing fluid-percussion (FP) brain injury. ⋯ The mean (+/-SD) lesion volumes were 12.1 (+/-4.5) mm3 following mild injury, 33.8 (+/-8.6) mm3 following moderate injury, and 45.1 (+/-14.0) mm3 following severe injury. A significant difference was observed between all injury groups using a t test with Bonferroni correction (p < 0.05). These results suggest that the TTC staining technique is a useful, rapid, and reproducible method for quantification of lesion volume following lateral FP brain injury.