Fig. 1

Toe-pinch responses and rectal temperature readings in male and female rats validate KX and isoflurane anesthesia performance. A Percent of toe-pinch responding male rats among those which were induced with KX versus isoflurane and maintained with ketamine or isoflurane, respectively, at different time-points during catheter placement and cranial window surgery. If animal responded to a toe-pinch, ketamine or isoflurane within maintenance dose was increased. Here and in C, data were fitted with exponential decay or exponential growth functions of first order using built-in fitting protocol in Origin 2022 (OriginLab Corp). For males under KX, R-square reflecting goodness of fit was 0.96, for males under isoflurane R reached 0.99. B Scattered graph showing rectal temperature readings in males under either KX or isoflurane anesthesia at different time-points (in minutes) following induction with KX or isoflurane, respectively. Here and in D, data are shown as mean ± S.D. ***Statistically significant difference, < 0.001 by ANOVA with Tukey post-test. C Percent of toe-pinch responding female rats among those which were induced with KX versus isoflurane and maintained with ketamine or isoflurane, respectively, at different time-points during catheter placement and cranial window surgery. If animal responded to a toe-pinch, ketamine or isoflurane within maintenance dose was increased. For females under KX, R-square reflecting goodness of fit was 0.99, for females under isoflurane R reached 0.72. D Scattered graph showing rectal temperature readings in females under either KX or isoflurane anesthesia at different time-points (in minutes) following induction with KX mixture or isoflurane, respectively. ##Statistically significant difference compared to the corresponding time-point in males, p = 0.000483 by 2-tail t-test; #statistically significant difference compared to the corresponding time-point in males, p = 0.012905 by 2-tail t-test. After 30 min, females lacked reply to a toe-pinch under KX (Fig. 1C). Thus, surgeries in females under KX anesthesia were completed faster than in males resulting in missing temperature readings at 30 and 45 min. ***Statistically significant difference, < 0.001 by ANOVA with Tukey post-test. &Statistically significant difference from rectal temperature at 30 and 45 min, p < 0.05 by ANOVA with Tukey post-test