New Stroke Treatment Has Immediate Effects

(Ivanhoe Newswire) – A new treatment for stroke may buy patients time. Researchers from Israel have found patients treated with the drug minocycline within six hours to 24 hours after a stroke had much fewer disabilities than those treated with placebo.

Current stroke treatments only work within three hours after symptoms start and many people don’t get to the hospital in time to be treated. In a new study, 152 men and women were treated with either an oral dose of minocycline or a placebo for five days after they had a stroke. Researchers tracked patients in both groups for three months.

Results show participants treated with minocycline performed four times better on the National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale than those who were treated with the placebo. The scale measures vision, facial palsy, movement, and speaking ability. The minocycline group scored 1.6, which means little or no disability while the placebo group scored 6.5, indicating a high end of mild disability.

“The improvement was already apparent within a week of the stroke,” study author Yair Lampl, M.D., Edith Wolfson Medical Center and Tel Aviv University in Israel was quoted as saying.

There were no serious side effects from minocycline. Lampl says the drug’s benefits are due to its anti-inflammatory effect and its ability to protect brain cells from destruction. Minocycline has already been shown to have a neuroprotective effect in animal models of multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease, and Lou Gehrig’s disease.

More research is needed to confirm the findings and to find the optimal dose. Researchers will also look at whether giving the drug through an IV would be more effective.

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SOURCE: Neurology, 2007;69:1404-1410