Fig. 1

DHEA mitigated severe neuronal damage after endovascular perforation in SAH model mice. a After intraperitoneal injection, DHEA levels in the serum, cortex, hippocampus and hypothalamus were measured by ELISA (n = 5, one-way ANOVA, *P < 0.05 compared with serum in the vehicle group; #P < 0.05, ##P < 0.01 compared with serum in the SAH + DHEA group). b, c DHEA treatment resulted in less water content on POD 1 and better neurological test performance on both POD 1 and POD 7 (n = 6 in both experiments, one-way ANOVA). d, e Representative TUNEL images 24 h after SAH and whole-brain NeuN⁺ TUNEL⁺/ NeuN⁺ proportion (n = 3 brains, one-way ANOVA). POD, postoperative day; Green, NeuN; red, TUNEL; bar = 1 mm. ns, not significant, *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001