In addition, both cerebral gliosis (evidenced by overexpression of both GFAP and AQP4) and neuronal apoptosis (evidenced by increased numbers of NeuN plus TUNEL double positive cells) and neurotoxicity (evidenced by increased iNOS expression) that occurred during transient cerebral ischemia could be greatly attenuated by agmatine therapy. Here, NOS2 is linked to transient ischemic attack.