While doing the stroke animal research, generally we performed the sham surgery, MCAO (stroke surgery) and stroke + drug treated surgery. In many papers the processes is same. However some paper compared the efficacy of drug between the contralateral and ipsilateral hemisphere of the same mice mentioning that contralateral hemisphere acts as the sham surgery. Recently some reviewer asked us to do in similar manner and I have to defend that the contralateral hemisphere of ischemic mice can not be compared with the hemisphere of sham operated mice. Could you please provide me the suitable references please?
Hi - I'm afraid I don't have a reference for you, but there are a number of meta-analyses/systematic reviews conducted by Macleod/Sena looking at animal models of stroke which might help.
There is a similar issue in models of peripheral neuropathy, with many researcher using the 'uninjured' side as a control, however bilateral sensitisation can be present, and only by including both a procedural sham AND naive group can you be sure that differences observed are robust. With "same animal" controls, you have no way of knowing the intervention doesn't produce bilateral effects.
Look up this paper: Neuropathogical features of a rat model for perinatal hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy with associated epilepsy. Specifically read about unilateral stroke related changes in contra-lateral hemisphere compared to the sham controls.
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