Ischemic stroke is one of the most common causes of disability and death in the EU. Improvements in the treatment and prevention of ischemic stroke have reduced this burden, but consequently, patients living with chronic post-stroke conditions are increasing in number. Addressing this emergent public health problem will require novel rehabilitation interventions at the clinical level. Recovery after stroke correlates closely with cerebral vascular function, such that patients with dysfunction of vascular reactivity exhibit significant functional impairment. On the other side, inflammation in autoimmune and infectious diseases has been demonstrated to also result in dysfunction of cerebral blood flow regulation. However, a potential mechanistic link between the post-stroke inflammatory response and chronically impaired vascular dysfunction after stroke has yet not been studied in detail. Therefore, the goal of this project is to identify the impact of cerebral, neuroinflammatory, and systemic innate immune responses to vascular dysfunction after experimental stroke.
The key objective of my project is to determine mechanistic relationship between specific inflammatory cascades, functional connectivity, and neurovascular impairment in the post-stroke brain. To understand long-term alterations in these fine regulatory processes we developed a novel imaging system. This enabled us to longitudinally follow brain-wise functional changes at high spatial resolution. Using this system, we evaluated how manipulation of local neuroinflammatory, and peripheral immune responses influence functional recovery after stroke.
