The Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of Georgia Regents University (GRU) approved the experimental procedures as per the National Institute of Health guidelines. C57BL/6 J wild-type male mice (10 ± 1 weeks old) were procured from Jackson Laboratory (Bar Harbor, Maine) and were housed in GRU’s AAALAC accredited facility. In these experiments, we use the term “remote ischemic postconditioning” (RIPostC) as we start the conditioning 1 week after the VCI procedure for 2-week period. We randomized 20 mice into 3 groups: a sham-operated group for procedures of BCAS and therapy (Sham group, N = 5), an untreated BCAS/VCI-induced group (with RIPostC sham procedure), i.e., BCAS group (N = 7), and a VCI-induced RIPostC-treated BCAS + RPostC-group (N = 8). The outcome measures were blinded. Cognitive function and CBF changes were considered as the primary outcomes to calculate the sample size of 5 in each group to provide >80 % power at α = 0.05, as reported by us earlier [10 (link)].
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