Deans' stroke musings: Antidepressants increase neural progenitor cells in the human hippocampus

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Monday, June 13, 2011

Antidepressants increase neural progenitor cells in the human hippocampus

Originally I believed that anti-depressants helped in hyperacute therapy by saving neurons. This would make it even better. Lots of million dollar words and acronyms. arghh!!!
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2743790/

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs) increase neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus (DG) of rodents and nonhuman primates. We determined whether SSRIs or TCAs increase neural progenitor (NPCs) and dividing cells in the human DG in major depressive disorder (MDD).

Whole frozen hippocampi from untreated subjects with MDD (N = 5), antidepressant-treated MDD (MDDT, N = 7), and controls (C, N = 7) were fixed, sectioned and immunostained for NPCs and dividing cell markers (nestin and Ki-67 respectively), NeuN and GFAP, in single and double labeling. NPC and dividing cell numbers in the DG were estimated by stereology. Clinical data were obtained by psychological autopsy and toxicological and neuropathological examination performed in all subjects.

NPCs decreased with age (p = 0.034). Females had more NPCs than males (p = 0.023). Correcting for age and sex, MDDT receiving SSRIs had more NPCs than untreated MDD (p ≤ 0.001) and controls (p ≤ 0.001), NPCs were not different in SSRIs- and TCAs-treated MDDT (p = 0.169). Dividing cell number, unaffected by age or sex, was greater in MDDT receiving TCAs than in untreated MDD (p ≤ 0.001), SSRI-treated MDD (p = 0.001) and controls (p ≤ 0.001). The NPCs and dividing cells increase in MDDT was localized to the rostral DG. MDDT had a larger DG volume compared with untreated MDD or controls (p = 0.009).

Antidepressants increase neural progenitor cell number in the anterior human dentate gyrus. Whether this finding is critical or necessary for the antidepressants effect remains to be determined.