Deans' stroke musings: Locust study points toward new treatment for stroke and migraine

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.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Locust study points toward new treatment for stroke and migraine

somehow I missed this when it came out in 2009, interesting that not only are mice and rats useful for examining stroke we now have locusts also.
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/275351

A similarity in brain disturbance between insects and people suffering from migraines, stroke and epilepsy points the way toward new drug therapies to address these conditions.

The discovery happened as a team of Queen's University biologists were studying the locust. The they found a connection with these human disorders that are linked by a brain disturbance during which nerve cells shut down. When locusts are exposed to extreme conditions such as high temperatures or lack of oxygen they go into a coma. This is similar to what happens during a stroke or migraine. The study shows the ability of the insects to resist entering the coma, and the speed of their recovery, can be manipulated using drugs that target one of the cellular signaling pathways in the brain. "This suggests that similar treatments in humans might be able to modify the thresholds or severity of migraine and stroke," says Gary Armstrong, who is completing his PhD research in Biology professor Mel Robertson's laboratory. "What particularly excites me is that in one of our locust models, inhibition of the targeted pathway completely suppresses the brain disturbance in 70 per cent of animals," adds Dr. Robertson. In prior research, the team had demonstrated locusts go into a coma as a way of shutting down and conserving energy when conditions are dangerous. The cellular responses in the locust are similar to the response of brain cells at the onset of a migraine. Insects are difficult to drown because of their ability to remain safely in a coma under water for several hours. Armstrong says, "It's intriguing that human neural problems may share their mechanistic roots with the process insects use to survive flash floods." The Queen's study is published in the Journal of Neuroscience. Other researchers on the team are Corinne Rodgers and Tomas Money who are also in Dr. Robertson's laboratory. The research was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).