GLP1R and ischemic stroke: In animal studies of stroke, exenatide has been shown to protect against ischemic stroke by upregulating GLP-1 receptors in neural cells (Lee et al., 2011), stimulating the ß-endorphin pathway (Jia et al., 2015), enhancing DNA repair efficiency (Yang et al., 2016), and promoting macrophage polarization toward the anti-inflammatory M2 phenotype among others (Kigerl et al., 2009; Darsalia et al., 2014).