Deans' stroke musings: Simvastatin Attenuates Stroke-induced Splenic Atrophy and Lung Susceptibility to Spontaneous Bacterial Infection in Mice

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.

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Simvastatin Attenuates Stroke-induced Splenic Atrophy and Lung Susceptibility to Spontaneous Bacterial Infection in Mice

Your doctor can decipher this to see if you should be administered statins immediately post-stroke even if this was only tested in mice. Earlier research on this is here: Its one of the drugs I'm going to print out immediately post-stroke regardless of what my doctor says.
Statins May Cut Stroke Mortality

http://stroke.ahajournals.org/content/early/2013/02/07/STROKEAHA.111.000633.short

Abstract

Background and Purpose—Statins are widely used in the primary and secondary prevention of ischemic stroke, but their effects on stroke-induced immunodepression and poststroke infections are elusive. We investigated the effects of simvastatin treatment on stroke-induced splenic atrophy and lung susceptibility to bacterial infection in acute experimental stroke in mice.

Methods—Ischemic stroke was induced by transient middle cerebral artery occlusion, followed by reperfusion. In some experiments, splenectomies were performed 2 weeks before middle cerebral artery occlusion. Animals were randomly assigned to sham and middle cerebral artery occlusion groups treated subcutaneously with vehicle or simvastatin (20 mg/kg per day). Brain infarction, neurological function, brain interferon-γ expression, splenic atrophy and apoptosis, and lung infection were examined.

Results—Simvastatin reduced stroke-induced spleen atrophy and splenic apoptosis via increased mitochrondrial antiapoptotic Bcl-2 expression and decreased proapoptotic Bax translocation from cytosol into mitochondria. Splenectomy reduced brain interferon-γ (3 days) and infarct size (5 days) after stroke, and these effects were reversed by adoptive transfer of splenocytes. Simvastatin inhibited brain interferon-γ (3 days) and reduced infarct volume and neurological deficits (5 days) after stroke, and these protective effects were observed not only in naive stroke mice but also in splenectomied stroke mice adoptively transferred with splenocytes. Simvastatin also decreased the stroke-associated lung susceptibility to spontaneous bacterial infection.

Conclusions—Results provide the first direct experimental evidence that simvastatin ameliorates stroke-induced peripheral immunodepression by attenuating spleen atrophy and lung bacterial infection. These findings contribute to a better understanding of the beneficial effects of statins in the treatment of stroke.