Deans' stroke musings: Genes and stroke

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.

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Genes and stroke

Can your genes tell you if you are predisposed to stroke? Researchers are trying to find out.
http://www.ivanhoe.com/science/story/2011/08/897a.html

BALTIMORE (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- It’s a well known fact that your everyday habits can affect your chances of having a stroke. Now, doctors want to learn more about what role our DNA plays. We have more on the international effort to identify genetic risk factors for stroke.

Gina Roberts is a regular at the Shades of Beauty hair salon in Baltimore, Maryland. Three years ago she was there for an appointment, when something went wrong.

“When I went to the ladies room I was staggering like I was drunk,” Gina Roberts, a Baltimore resident told Ivanhoe.

Gina would later learn she was having a stroke. Every year, nearly 800,000 occur in the U.S--A potentially deadly condition that disrupts blood flow to the brain.

“We need to learn more about how to prevent stroke and to improve recovery after stroke,” Steven Kittner M.D., neurologist at the University of Maryland School of Medicine told Ivanhoe.

Dr. Kittner and his colleagues at the University of Maryland are trying to accomplish that. They’re teaming up with scientists around the world to identify the genes responsible for causing ischemic stroke(Why just ischemic?), the most common form that is caused by a blood clot in the brain.

“We’ll have these blood samples genotyped for in many cases over a million genetic variants in order to search for those that might be predisposing to stroke,” Dr. Kittner said.

Once identified, this research could eventually lead to new methods of prevention and treatment, and benefit survivors like Phil Anderson. The runner of 33 marathons and 77 ultra marathons had a stroke four years ago.

“I couldn’t say anything for a month,” Phil Anderson, a stroke survivor told Ivanhoe.

Therapy has helped smooth out Phil’s speech. Now he’s using his voice and sport to spread the word about stroke.

“I’m trying to raise awareness of what happens to people and how not to have them happen to you,” Anderson concluded.

Most of the previous genetic studies in stroke have small sample sizes, and ambiguous results. But the members of the International Stroke Genetics Consortium have pooled their resources and DNA collections to get larger sample sizes, which can provide definitive answers-making this stroke genetics project one of the largest ever launched.

The Biophysical Society contributed to the information contained in the TV portion of this report.