New Stroke Treatment That Really Brings Hope For Stroke Patients

Absolutely nothing in this article proves that stem cells were the reason for improvements. I bet they don't even know if the stem cells survived and integrated into the brain.  I could just as easily argue that the action of drilling holes in the skull(trepanation) caused the improvements. Injecting them into the damaged area would mean injecting them into CSF(Cerebrospinal fluid) which has no blood supply. The placebo effect in strong in this one.

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.

Stanford researchers ‘stunned’ by stem cell experiment that helped stroke patient walk

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2016/06/02/stanford-researchers-stunned-by-stem-cell-experiment-that-helped-stroke-patient-walk/
Nothing here gives me any sense of hope that stem cells work. They have NO fucking clue if the stem cells even survived and migrated to the correct locations. 
1. No reference to how many growth factors were created. 
2. Nothing on the objective damage in the brain.  
3. No specification of what scale was used for measurement so we could tell how objective it was. 
4. Nothing listed here proves cause and effect.
I really do wonder if our researchers even know how to run research.
I could make just  as strong a case that the the real cause of the improvement was the trepanation.

Healed over trepanation, notice the rounded edges

 
Stanford researchers studying the effect of stem cells injected directly into the brains of stroke patients said Thursday that they were "stunned" by the extent to which the experimental treatment restored motor function in some of the patients. While the research involved only 18 patients and was designed primarily to look at the safety of such a procedure and not its effectiveness, it is creating significant buzz in the neuroscience community because the results appear to contradict a core belief about brain damage — that it is permanent and irreversible.
The results, published in the journal Stroke, could have implications for our understanding of an array of disorders including traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury and Alzheimer's if confirmed in larger-scale testing.
The work involved patients who had passed the critical six-month mark when recoveries generally plateau and there are rarely further improvements. This is the point at which therapies are typically stopped as brain circuits are thought to be dead and unable to be repaired. Each participant in the study had suffered a stroke beneath the brain’s outermost layer and had significant impairments in moving their arms and-or legs. Some participants in the study had had a stroke as long as three to five years before the experimental treatment.

The one-time therapy involved surgeons drilling a hole into the study participants' skulls and injecting stem cells in several locations around the area damaged by the stroke. These stem cells were harvested from the bone marrow of adult donors. While the procedure sounds dramatic, it is considered relatively simple as far as brain surgery goes. The patients were conscious the whole time and went home the same day.
They suffered minimal adverse effects such as temporary headaches, nausea and vomiting. One patient experienced some fluid buildup from the procedure that had to be drained but recovered fully from the issue. The volunteers were then tested at one month, six and 12 months after surgery using brain imaging and several standard scales that look at speech, vision, motor ability and other aspects of daily functioning.
Gary Steinberg, the study's lead author and chair of neurosurgery at Stanford, said in an interview that while he is cautious about "overselling" the results of such a small study, his team has been "stunned" that seven of the 18 patients experienced significant improvement in their abilities following treatment.

"Their recovery was not just a minimal recovery like someone who couldn't move a thumb now being able to wiggle it. It was much more meaningful. One 71-year-old wheelchair-bound patient was walking again," said Steinberg, who personally performed most of the surgeries.
He also recounted the progress of a much younger patient, age 39, who was two years post-stroke and had had such problems walking and speaking that she "did not want to get married to her boyfriend." "She was embarrassed about walking down the aisle," he explained. But after treatment, Steinberg said, "She's now walking much better and talking much better and she's married and pregnant."
Steinberg said that the study does not support the idea that the injected stem cells become neurons, as has been previously thought. Instead, it suggests that they seem to trigger some kind of biochemical process that enhances the brain's ability to repair itself.
"A theory is that they turn the adult brain into the neonatal brain that recovers well," he explained.

Sean Savitz, a professor of neurosurgery at the University of Texas, said he was encouraged by the study but said there is a lot more work to be done to try to confirm the results and figure out the mechanism for the reaction. One major question, he said, is whether there is something about the stem cells that is stimulating the changes or whether it is simply the procedure itself inducing some other sort of biological reaction or a placebo effect.
Nicholas Boulis, a neurosurgeon and researcher at Emory University, said the study appears to support the idea that there may be latent pathways in the brain that can be reactivated — a theory that has been "working its way to the surface" over the past few years.

Stem cell brain injections let people walk again after stroke

Nothing here gives me any sense of hope that stem cells work. They have NO fucking clue if the stem cells even survived and migrated to the correct locations. 
1. No reference to how many growth factors were created. 
2. Nothing on the objective damage in the brain.  
3. No specification of what scale was used for measurement so we could tell how objective it was. 
4. Nothing listed here proves cause and effect.
I really do wonder if our researchers even know how to run research.
Maybe the real cause of the improvement was the trepanation.

Healed over trepanation, notice the rounded edges

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2091841-stem-cell-brain-injections-let-people-walk-again-after-stroke

By Andy Coghlan

People once dependent on wheelchairs after having a stroke are walking again since receiving injections of stem cells into their brains. Participants in the small trial also saw improvements in their speech and arm movements.
“One 71-year-old woman could only move her left thumb at the start of the trial,” says Gary Steinberg, a neurosurgeon at Stanford University who performed the procedure on some of the 18 participants. “She can now walk and lift her arm above her head.”
Run by SanBio of Mountain View, California, this trial is the second to test whether stem cell injections into patients’ brains can help ease disabilities resulting from stroke. Patients in the first, carried out by UK company ReNeuron, also showed measurable reductions in disability a year after receiving their injections and beyond.
All patients in the latest trial showed improvements. Their scores on a 100-point scale for evaluating mobility – with 100 being completely mobile – improved on average by 11.4 points, a margin considered to be clinically meaningful for patients. “The most dramatic improvements were in strength, coordination, ability to walk, the ability to use hands and the ability to communicate, especially in those whose speech had been damaged by the stroke,” says Steinberg.

..

In both trials, improvements in patients’ mobility had plateaued since having had strokes between six months and three years previously.
“We used to think the affected brain circuits were dead,” says Steinberg. “Now, we have to rethink this, and I personally think the circuits are inhibited, and our treatment helps to disinhibit them.”

Baby steps

Steinberg injected the cells through a borehole in the skull into regions of the brain that control motor movements, and which had been damaged by the stroke. Each participant received either 2.5, 5 or 10 million cells.
The injected material consisted of mesenchymal stem cells taken from the bone marrow of two healthy donors. SanBio genetically engineered the cells to possess a gene called Notch1, which activates factors that help brain development in infants. Experiments in rats revealed that the engineered stem cells disappear within a month or so, but not before secreting several growth factors that build connections between brain cells and spawn the growth of new blood vessels to nourish growing brain tissue.

Ads by ZINC

“We think the cells change the adult brain so that it’s more like a baby’s brain, which repairs very well,” says Steinberg. “They are secreting all sorts of growth factors, which aid repair, and which also alter the immune system to get rid of inflammation that otherwise obstructs repair.”
In the ReNeuron trial, patients received neural stem cells originally extracted from the brains of aborted fetuses, then multiplied to produce larger amounts.
“This is very encouraging news for the field of stem cell research and especially patients with established disability as a result of stroke, where this is no proven treatment to aid recovery,” says Julian Howell, chief medical officer at ReNeuron. “Both companies are at a similar stage of development, and while it’s great to hear stories of major improvements in some patients, controlled studies are absolutely necessary to establish the benefits and risks of stem cell therapy for stroke.”

Remarkable results

ReNeuron is preparing a second trial, while SanBio is in the process of performing the treatment on a further 156 patients. Steinberg says that this time, a third of the patients will receive a sham treatment – a hole in the head without the injection of stem cells – and the remainder will receive either 2.5 or 5-million cells.
There are around 30 similar trials in progress. These deliver stem cells to stroke patients by injecting them into the blood, but none have shown such remarkable results as the two trials that injected the cells into the brain, says Steinberg. “We still have much to learn, including the right cell for the job, the right dose and the right means of delivery,” he says.
The UK Stroke Association welcomed the results but also cautioned that further trials are essential to provide additional evidence the treatment works. “Although small, this latest trial suggests that the treatment is safe and may be able to restore movement to people previously lost after stroke,” says Shamim Quadir, a spokesman for the association. “The trial adds to a growing body of early clinical evidence suggesting stem cell treatment could promote recovery in people months, even years, after having a stroke, bringing hope to many living with a disability.”
Journal reference: Stroke, in press

Maggots make a comeback as a cheap, non-antibiotic treatment for infected wounds

So ask your doctor if your dead area in your brain needs cleaning out by maggots and using trepanation to get there.
http://medcitynews.com/2014/09/maggots-make-comeback-cheap-non-antibiotic-treatment-infected-wounds/?

For Older Stroke Patients Cutting a Hole in the Head Helps

All I could think of was this picture
But in the article they had this statement which I would love to know visually in 3d what the extent of the MCA is, that would allow me to determine what my damage is compared to the maximum a MCA could cause. It seems like an incredibly simple request but I'm sure I'll never find out with the current information out there.
and brain imaging results indicating that ischemia had affected at least two-thirds of the brain served by the middle cerebral artery.
http://www.medpagetoday.com/Neurology/Strokes/44841?

Maggots can help quicken healing, study shows

For sqeamish  readers, STOP NOW. I once posted the question about whether or not my dead brain area would rot. A doctor replied that it would just turn to cerebrospinal fluid.  I however was thinking of a roommate of mine who was studying bones of dead animals who would be glad to see carrion beetles consuming the dead body, probably similar to maggots. And was envisioning needing to drill a hole(trepanation) in my head to allow these to clean it up.

http://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2012/04/maggots-can-help-quicken-healing-study-shows/
Carrion beetle here:
 http://snailstales.blogspot.com/2008/10/carrion-beetle-nicrophorus-tomentosus.html
maggots here:
http://www.medicalcodingschools.net/blog/7-disgusting-medical-treatments-that-actually-work