Animal Models of Stroke Versus Clinical Stroke: Comparison of Infarct Size, Cause, Location, Study Design, and Efficacy of Experimental Therapies

Abstract

A quantitative and qualitative comparison of contemporary neuroprotection and thrombolytic stroke trials and their preclinical animal counterparts has been undertaken, with meta-analysis (DerSimonian and Laird, 1986) used to evaluate imaging and histological outcomes. Results from 35 clinical trials including 5,532 patients were compared with data from 3,145 pre-clinical acute-stroke experiments in 45,476 animals. While clinical trials tended to be of higher methodological quality and have larger sample sizes than animal experiments (71 patients vs. 7 animals per group), both were similarly underpowered owing to the greater variability in human stroke (average standard deviation of mean in h..