IL6 and Stroke: By contrast, in stroke animal models, IL-6 appears to play a neuroprotective role (Matsuda et al., 1996; Loddick et al., 1998; Herrmann et al., 2003), suggesting that its rapid and persistent elevation in the ischemic brain (Suzuki et al., 1999; Ali et al., 2000) may represent a compensatory mechanism to counteract the damaging effects of the insult.