Neuroprotective effects of minocycline and progesterone on white matter injury after focal cerebral ischemia.

Stroke induced white matter injury can induce marked neurological deficits even after relatively small infarcts, due to the tightly packed nature of white matter tracts especially in certain areas in the brain. Many drugs which were successful in the pre-clinical trials failed in clinical trials, which was attributed in part to the focus on grey matter injury completely and ignoring their effect on white matter. In this work we selected two known neuroprotective drugs (minocycline and progesterone) and examined their effect on white matter injury after focal cerebral ischemia/reperfusion injury in rats.