Abstract #1258

Normobaric Hyperoximia Increases Cerebral Injury Caused by Perinatal Hypoxia: DTI Study in Rats

Kurt Hermann Bockhorst¹, Harriet Charmaine Rhea², Rui Liu³, Jose Regino Perez-Polo², Ponnada A. Narayana¹

¹DII, University of Texas, Houston, TX, USA; ²Medical Branch, University of Texas, Galveston, TX, USA; ³ECI, University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA

Perinatal hypoxia is commonly treated with hyperoxia. In order to investigate the effectiveness of this therapy, we performed MRI/DTI studies on the P7 rat model with hypoxic/ischemic injury (HI) or HI followed by hyperoxia (HHI) one day, one week, and three weeks after insult. We found, that after three weeks the average size of the HHI treated brain was significantly smaller than HI and normal brains. Also, HHI treatment resulted in significantly larger lesions than HI. The DTI metrics in various white matter structures were significantly different between HI and HHI. Our results indicate, that hyperoxic treatment does not ameliorate, but exacerbate the outcome in perinatal hypoxic/ischemic injury.