From the ArcaMax Publishing, Health & Fitness Newsletter:
http://www.arcamax.com/news/healthtips/s-367571-571606
ANN ARBOR, Mich. (UPI) -- U.S. and Swedish researchers say a leukemia
drug may help patients benefit from tissue plasminogen activator, or
tPA stroke treatment.
For more than a decade, the drug tPA has proven its worth as the most
effective emergency treatment for the most common kind of stroke but
its promise is blemished because: tPA can cause dangerous bleeding in
the brain and its brain-saving power fades fast after the third hour
of a stroke.
Researchers at the University of Michigan and the Ludwig Institute at
the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, found tPA in mice
causes the blood-brain barrier to leak but mice taking the leukemia
drug imatinib, also known as Gleevec, had 33 percent less leakage than
those that didn't and 34 percent less damage to the brain.
"Together with our clinical colleagues at the Karolinska University
Hospital in Stockholm we are now rapidly continuing to explore this
exciting possibility in clinical trials involving stroke patients,"
study leader Ulf Eriksson of the Karolinska Institute.
The findings are published online in Nature Medicine.