It is recently known that early brain injury is one of the important pathophysiology to determinant the prognosis of subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH). We herein examined the role of sphingosine related pathway activation in the treatment of early brain injury of experimental SAH model.

SAH were induced by endovascular perforation in mice or rats, and they were treated with 1) unfractionated heparin 2) isoflurane 3) FTY720 (sphingosine receptor agonist). The animals evaluated neurological scores, brain edema and sphingosine metabolism-related molecular markers.

The above-mentioned treatments improved neurofunction and brain edema, and provided antiapoptotic effects such as upregulation of phosphorylated Akt and downregulation of caspase-3. The effects were associated with activation of sphingosine kinase and sphingosine receptor.

We suggest that activation of the sphingosine related pathway should have beneficial effects in early brain injury of experimental SAH and could improve the prognosis of the clinical SAH patients.