Evidence indicates that reactive astrocytes play an important role in neurological functional amelioration after stroke. Bone marrow stromal cell (BMSC) transplantation-promoted astrocyte-derived neurotrophic factors’ expressions resulted in decreasing the number of apoptotic neurons and improving neurogenesis and angiogenesis in the ischemic boundary zone. | Turkish Journal of Biology Turk J Biol (2016) 40: 519-528 © TÜBİTAK doi: Research Article Simvastatin combined with bone marrow stromal cells treatment activates astrocytes to ameliorate neurological function after ischemic stroke in rats 1, 1 1 1 2 1 3 Yonghua ZHAO *, Qian ZHANG , Zhenwei CHEN , Naiwei LIU , Chienchih KE , Youhua XU , Weikang WU State Key Laboratory of Quality Research in Chinese Medicine, Faculty of Chinese Medicine, Macau University of Science and Technology, Macao, PR China 2 Institute of Clinical Medicine, National Yang Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan 3 Department of Pathophysiology, Zhongshan School of Medicine, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, PR China 1 Received: Accepted/Published Online: Final Version: Abstract: Evidence indicates that reactive astrocytes play an important role in neurological functional amelioration after stroke. Bone marrow stromal cell (BMSC) transplantation-promoted astrocyte-derived neurotrophic factors’ expressions resulted in decreasing the number of apoptotic neurons and improving neurogenesis and angiogenesis in the ischemic boundary zone. Recent studies found that simvastatin had neuroprotective activity in acute stroke. However, it is still ambiguous as to whether simvastatin combined with BMSCs can further activate astrocytes, which contribute to neurological functional recovery after ischemic stroke. In our present study, we established a middle cerebral artery occlusion model in rats and found that combination treatment of simvastatin and BMSCs could significantly increase neurological functional scores and induce activated astrocytes to enhance stromal cell-derived factor-1 α, vascular endothelial growth factor, brain-derived neurotrophic factor, and glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor expressions compared with BMSC alone (P < ) by immunofluorescence staining on the 7th day after .
