The influence of platelet glycoprotein receptor blockade on stroke outcome. (A) Coronal 2,3,4-triphenyltetarzoliumchloride–stained sections at 24 hours after 1 hour of tMCAO in a sham-treated mouse. Note the large infarction of the entire middle cerebral artery territory, and the corresponding T2-w magnetic resonance image of the infarct in the bottom panel. (B) Blockade with anti-GPIb Fab significantly reduced infarct size. The arrow points to the small infarct within the basal ganglia, whereas the cerebral cortex is protected. The corresponding magnetic resonance image correctly depicts decreased infarct size (arrow in bottom panel). (C) Surprisingly, blockade of GPIIb/IIIa had no influence on the infarct size in surviving animals, and was associated with lethal intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) in many animals (not shown). Importantly, no areas with signal loss indicating bleeding complications were seen in mice after GPIb-Fab blockade (bottom panel in B; compare with ICH in Figure 2C). TTC scans were taken from an Epson Perfection 3200 Photo flatbed scanner (Seiko Epson) at 600 dpi and processed using Epson Scan software (Seiko Epson). MRI was performed on a 1.5-Tesla MR device (Vision; Siemens) using a custom-made dual channel surface coil designed for the examination of mouse heads (A063HACG; Rapid Biomedical). The image protocol comprised a coronal 3D T2-weighted gradient echo–constructed interference in steady state sequence (slice thickness, 1 mm). MR images were transferred to an external workstation (Leonardo; Siemens) for data processing.