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영어

Intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) is a major cause of death and disability in the elderly. In the present study, we examined the age-dependence of the effect of treadmill exercise on the intrastriatal hemorrhage-in-duced neuronal cell death in rats. Young (8 weeks old) and old (64 weeks old) Sprague-Dawley male rats were used in the present study. Intras-triatal hemorrhage was induced by injection of 0.2 U collagenase (1 μL volume) into the striatum using a stereotaxic instrument. The rats in the exercise groups were forced to run on a treadmill for 30 min daily for 7 days. Lesion size was determined by Nissl staining. Apoptosis was as-sessed by the terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase-mediated dUTP nick end labeling (TUNEL) assay. In the present results, induction of hemorrhage increased lesion size and enhanced apoptosis. Treadmill exercise decreased the lesion size with suppressing apoptosis. Howev-er, the size of lesion induced by hemorrhage and the number of apop-totic cells were not different between young and old rats. Treadmill ex-ercise significantly reduced the ICH-induced lesion size and the number of apoptotic cells irrespective of age. The data suggest that treadmill exercise may provide therapeutic value against ICH by suppressing neu-ronal apoptosis regardless of age.