Figure 2

Minocycline (Mino) treatment significantly diminished neuroinflammatory gene expression following ischemia-reperfusion (IR) without affecting astrogliosis-related gene expression. Mino was delivered as twice-daily intraperitoneal (IP) injections, with two initial dosages of 45 mg/kg prior to ischemia and dosages of 22.5 mg/kg just prior to ischemia and every 12 h for the next 2 d during the reperfusion period as described in Materials and Methods. Non-treated (NT) animals received PBS vehicle injections. One eye of each rat was subjected to IR for 45 min or needle puncture only (Sham) and after 48 h of reperfusion total RNA was isolated from retinas and relative mRNA levels of neuroinflammation-related genes (A) ICAM-1, (B) LCN2, (C) TNFRSR12A, (D) SERPINA3N, (E) CCL2 and (F) the astrogliosis-related gene GFAP by duplex qRT-PCR with β-actin mRNA serving as control. Results shown are the means and standard error of means obtained from eight animals per group. *P ≤0.05, **P ≤0.01 and ***P ≤0.001 by Students t-test.