MMP9 and retinal ischemia: As shown in Fig. 7 and Table 7 (n = 4–9 for Bcl-2; n = 4 for HO-1; n = 4–9 for P-p38 MAPK; n = 4–5 for MMP-9), retinal ischemia plus 24 h of reperfusion and pretreatment with vehicle (Group 2) led to a significant decrease in the Bcl-2 ratio (0.78 ± 0.08; P = 0.03) or increase in HO-1 (0.99 ± 0.20; P = 0.008), P-p38 MAPK (1.12 ± 0.18; P = 0.03) and MMP-9 (0.70 ± 0.23; P = 0.02) ratios compared with the control sham retina (Group 1; Bcl-2: 1.06 ± 0.25; HO-1: 0.27 ± 0.12; P-p38 MAPK: 0.15 ± 0.06; MMP-9: 0.25 ± 0.26) 24 h after the sham procedure.