This will never be studied fully here, you can't study any kind of recreational drug even if it could save thousands of lives. One major problem is that the rats were put into opiod hibernation prior to giving them a stroke. I can't ever see that occurring in real life, 'I'm going to have a stroke in the next hour so get me my opium so I can hibernate through it.' But maybe put into hibernation in the ambulance, someone can compare the efficacy of that to hypothermia.
http://www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=58600&CultureCode=en
Using an opioid drug to induce a hibernatory state in rats reduces
the damage caused by an artificial stroke. Researchers writing in the
open access journal BMC Biology have shown that those animals
put into the chemical slumber suffered less behavioral dysfunctions
after a period of cerebral artery blockage than control rats.
Cesar
Borlongan, a neuroscientist at the University of South Florida Center
for Aging and Brain Repair, in Tampa, FL, worked with a team of
researchers from the National Institutes of Health, USA, to investigate
the role of the opioid system in brain injury and protection. He said,
“Studies in hibernating and active squirrels have shown that ‘natural
hibernation’ has anti-ischemic effects. We’ve shown that a drug that
induces hibernation can achieve similar results”.
Borlongan and
his colleagues dosed the rats with [D-ala2,D-leU5]enkephalin (DADLE), a
drug from the same pharmaceutical family as morphine and heroin. They
found that, after an experimental stroke, the pretreated animals
performed better than control rats in a series of behavioral tests. The
researchers write, “DADLE prevented cell death processes and behavioral
abnormalities. The observation that this substance, previously shown to
induce hibernation, attenuated deficits inherent in cerebral ischemia
provides a new pharmacological target for stroke therapy”.
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