Healed over trepanation, notice the rounded edges |
http://medicnewsweb.com/stroke-treatment-brings-hope/
Stroke Treatment
for survivors who believed they would be paralysed or need a wheelchair
for the rest of their lives are walking and moving again following a
ground-breaking stem cell stroke
treatment.18 patients who agreed to allow doctors to drill a hole in
their skull and inject stem cells into the damaged part of their brain
have made a ‘remarkable’ recovery.Incredibly, it worked for patients
whose strokes had occurred between six months and three years
previously. Historically doctors have believed that the brain will no
longer regenerate after six months.
“The remarkable recovery we saw in many of these chronic stroke
patients was quite surprising,” said Prof Gary Steinberg, Chair of
Neurosurgery at Stanford, who has spent 15 years researching stem
cells.“This wasn’t just ‘they couldn’t move their thumb and now they
can’. Patients who were in wheelchairs are walking now. Their ability to
move around has recovered visibly. That’s unprecedented.“The study
changes our prior notion that patients can’t recover much more after the
first six months following a stroke because the circuits are dead, or
irreversibly damaged.“Clearly the circuits can be resurrected by this
Stroke treatment and we are still investigating how they are being
jump-started.”The stem cells in question were taken from the bone marrow
of two donors. Scientists had previously believed that stem cells could
not integrate into the brain to become neurons.
All the patients involved in the trial
had suffered ischemic strokes where a clot prevents blood getting to the
brain, which leads to brain cell death. The procedure involved drilling
a small hole in the skull above the damaged area so that SB623 stem
cells could be injected at several spots around the edge of the injury.Charities
said the new Stroke treatment could help fill the ‘urgent need’ for
alternative treatments for stroke.Dr Shamim Qadir, Research
Communications Manager at the Stroke Assoication said: “In the UK
someone has a stroke every three and a half minute and over half of all
stroke survivors are left with a disability.
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