The antibiotic erythromycin induces tolerance against transient global cerebral ischemia in rats (pharmacologic preconditioning).

Background Cerebral ischemic tolerance can be induced by a variety of noxious stimuli, but no clinically applicable regimen for preconditioning has been described. Therefore, the authors tested the ability of a pharmacologic preconditioning strategy using the well-known macrolide antibiotic erythromycin to induce tolerance against transient global cerebral ischemia in vivo. They also investigated whether tolerance induction by erythromycin involves transcriptional and translational changes of cerebral B-cell leukemia/lymphoma-2 (bcl-2) expression. Methods Male Wistar rats were treated with erythromycin (25 mg/kg intramuscularly) or vehicle and subjected to 15 min of transient global cerebr…