Beagle puppy model of intraventricular hemorrhage. Effect of indomethacin on local cerebral glucose utilization.

The newborn beagle puppy has been demonstrated to provide a good model for neonatal intraventricular hemorrhage (IVH). A study was designed to determine if indomethacin can prevent IVH, and if indomethacin would produce changes in local cerebral glucose utilization (LCGU). By computerized random design, newborn beagle puppies were pretreated with either indomethacin (a known inhibitor of prostaglandin synthetase) or saline, and then assigned either to receive a hemorrhagic hypotension/volume reexpansion insult or to receive no insult. Pretreatment with indomethacin produced a marked drop in the incidence of IVH as well as significant alterations in the blood pressure responses to the hemorrhagic hypotension/volume reexpansion insult. Carbon-14 autoradiography was used to determine LCGU: no alterations were demonstrated in cerebral metabolism in uninjured pups pretreated with indomethacin compared to saline-pretreated animals. In addition, although the hemorrhagic hypotension/volume reexpansion insult produced marked alterations in LCGU in both groups of traumatized pups, indomethacin prevented the changes in LCGU in the germinal matrix and white matter that were found in the saline-pretreated animals.