Deans' stroke musings: YOUR HEALTH: An AIDS drug that could greatly help stroke patients

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 6, 2019

YOUR HEALTH: An AIDS drug that could greatly help stroke patients

It is YOUR RESPONSIBILITY to get your doctor and stroke hospital involved with initiating research into human subjects on this. Your stroke hospital will do nothing if YOU don't speak up. Because your stroke hospital has done no followup for decades is the reason nothing is ever solved in stroke.

YOUR HEALTH: An AIDS drug that could greatly help stroke patients

Posted 6:30 pm, August 5, 2019, by Jim Mertens

LOS ANGELES, California – An AIDS drug may become the first ever pharmaceutical treatment from a human gene discovery to help patients recover from stroke.

Reams Freedman had a severe stroke 21 years ago.
"It was like I was run over by a truck. So I went from a fully-functioning man to someone who essentially couldn't do anything."

A stroke is a 'brain attack'. It can happen to anyone at any time.

Using physical and occupational therapies that were available, he got back most of his function and now runs a stroke recovery group.
Now, his friend, UCLA's Dr. S. Tom Carmichael believes a missing gene may speed up stroke recovery, and that may lead to a medication that helps.
"It's tempered hope, but it's a pathway, and we haven't had a lot of those," said Dr. Carmichael, professor and chair of UCLA's Geffen School of Medicine.

Some people recover completely from strokes(yeah, 10%), but more than two-thirds of survivors will have some type of disability. (Wrong, 90% will have a disability)

In a study in Tel Aviv, stroke survivors without a functioning CCR-5 gene showed significantly better improvements in motor skills, language, sensory function, memory, and attention.
The drug Maraviroc blocks CCR-5 and slows HIV progression.
Dr. Carmichael hopes the same mechanism will accelerate stroke recovery.
"Our hope is that it does enhance recovery, even a little bit, and lets many stroke patients know there's a possibility if you can get enhanced recovery a little bit and increase brain plasticity, you may be able to do more with a very aggressive rehabilitation program."
Dr. Carmichael says Maraviroc worked in mouse trials.
"The mice made about 30% to 50% enhanced recovery," he said.
"We know in humans with movement or motor recovery that if you get a 10% improvement in motor function that actually translates to a meaningful change in your interaction to community."
He says the mouse recovery was far better than that and it allows researchers some hope that it was "a meaningful thing we hit in the mouse."
Human trials are beginning now.
If this story has impacted your life or prompted you or someone you know to seek or change treatments, please let us know by contacting Jim Mertens at jim.mertens@wqad.com or Marjorie Bekaert Thomas at mthomas@ivanhoe.com.