Abstract： Objective To study the effects of ischemia postconditioning(IPC) in reducing ischemia-reperfusion injury(IRI) in acute limp ischemia(ALI) and investigate the mechanism.Methods 45 New Zealand rabbits were treated with the method that combined high lipid diets and femoral intima injury by balloon inflation to build up limp atherosclerotic stenosis model,then they were randomly divided into three groups( each group 15 rabbits):control group;IR group and IPC group.Serum creatine phosphate kinase(CK),malondialehyde(MDA),superoxide dismutase (SOD) in three groups were measured before occlusion and 2 hours after sustaining reperfusion.The histological changes of limp skeletal muscle of experimental rabbits were analyzed and TUNEL method was used to access apoptosis of skeletal muscle cells.Results The levels of CK,M DA in IPC group were lower than IR group [ (7.49 ± 0.84)vs (8.19 ± 1.06),P＜0.05],[ (3.67 ±0.36) vs (4.06 ±0.55),P ＜0.05] while SOD level was higher than IR group [ (420.40 ± 30.94 ) vs ( 384.73 ± 44.12),P ＜ 0.05 ] ; The injury of skeletal muscles in I PC group was lighter than IR group and the apoptosis index of skeletal muscle cells was significantly decreased compared with that in IR group[(12.27+2.11)％ vs (16.62 ± 1.44)％,P＜0.01].Conclusion Applying IPC in acute limp ischemia could alleviate IRI and protect skeletal muscles.The mechanism was associated with oxidation resistance enhancing and the effects in reducing apoptosis of skeletal muscles induced by IRI.