Figure 1

The effect of progesterone treatment in young adult males. Comparison of post-surgery survival according to treatment/surgery (A). Mortality data expressed using the Kaplan-Meier curve and analysis using the Mantel-Haenszel log-rank test revealed no significant difference in survival between groups (P = 0.3286). In terms of body mass gain following surgery (B), both progesterone and vehicle treated groups gained body mass at significantly slower rate compared to shams (P = 0.0004). Neurological deficit scoring (C) revealed that MCAO resulted in a significant neurological deficit regardless of whether mice had received progesterone (P = 0.0049) or vehicle (P = 0.0002) treatment compared to shams. Progesterone treatment reduced neurological deficit compared to vehicle treatment (P = 0.0271). Assessment of motor performance, using the foot-fault test (D) revealed that progesterone treatment resulted in significantly fewer contralateral foot-faults compared to vehicle treated animals (P = 0.0108). Number of animals per group is shown in parentheses, all data (B-D) are expressed as mean ± SEM, and * = P < 0.05.