Caloric restriction stabilizes body weight and accelerates behavioral recovery in aged rats after focal ischemia

Obesity and hyperinsulinemia are risk factors for stroke. We tested the hypothesis that caloric restriction, which reduces the incidence of age‐related obesity and metabolic syndrome, may represent an efficient and cost‐effective strategy for preventing stroke and its devastating consequences. To this end, we placed aged, obese Sprague‐Dawley aged rats on a calorie‐restricted diet for 8 weeks prior to the experimental infarction. Stroke in this animal model caused a progressive decrease in weight that reached a minimum at day 6 for the young rats, and at day 10 for the aged, ad libitum‐fed rats. However, in aged animals that were calorie‐restricted prior to stroke, body weight did not decrease after stroke, but we noted accelerated body weight gain shortly thereafter starting at day 5 poststroke. Moreover, calorie‐restricted aged animals showed improved behavioral recovery in tasks requiring complex sensorimotor skills, or in tasks requiring cutaneous sensitivity and sensorimotor integration or spatial memory. Likewise, calorie‐restricted aged rats showed significant poststroke increases in serum glucose, insulin, and IGF1 levels, as well as CR‐specific changes in the expression of gene transcripts involved in glycogen metabolism, IGF signaling, apoptosis, arteriogenesis, and hypoxia. In conclusion, our study shows that recovery from stroke is enhanced in aged rats by a dietary regimen that reduces body weight prior to infarct.