Improved Recovery of Motor Function After Stroke

ScienceDaily (Apr. 19, 2011) — "After the acute treatment window closes, the only effective treatment for stroke is physical/occupational therapy. Now scientists from Children's Hospital Boston report a two-pronged molecular therapy that leads to significant recovery of skilled motor function in a rat model of stroke. Their findings are reported April 20 in the Journal of Neuroscience.
By combining two molecular therapies -- each known to promote some recovery on its own -- the researchers achieved more nerve growth and a greater recovery of motor function than with either treatment alone. One therapy, inosine, is a naturally-present molecule that promotes nerve growth; the other is NEP1-40, an agent that counteracts natural inhibitors of nerve growth.
"When you put these two together, you get much stronger growth of new circuits than either one alone, and very striking functional improvements," says senior author Larry Benowitz, PhD, of the Children's Department of Neurosurgery.
Strokes in humans often damage the motor cortex on one side of the brain, interfering with skilled motor functions on the opposite side of the body. Led by Laila Zai, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in Benowitz's lab and the study's first author, the researchers modeled this scenario by inducing strokes on one side of the rats' brains -- specifically in a part of the motor cortex that controls forelimb movement. They then examined the rats' ability to perform a skilled reaching task -- retrieving food -- with the forelimb on the opposite side.
After 3 to 4 weeks, rats treated with both inosine and NEP1-40 could perform the task -- which required coordinated movements of the paw and digits -- with success rates equivalent to those before the stroke. Benowitz likens the complexity of this task to a person eating with utensils or operating a joystick."

Patient's Own Bone Marrow Stem Cells May Provide Treatment for Brain Injuries

ScienceDaily (Mar. 11, 2011) — Stem cells derived from a patient's own bone marrow were safely used in pediatric patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI), according to results of a Phase I clinical trial at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth). The results were published in this month's issue of Neurosurgery, the journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons."Our data demonstrate that the acute harvest of bone marrow and infusion of bone marrow mononuclear cells to acutely treat severe TBI in children is safe," said Charles S. Cox, Jr., M.D., the study's lead author and professor of pediatric neurosurgery at the UTHealth Medical School. The clinical trial, which included 10 children aged 5 to 14 with severe TBI, was done in partnership with Children's Memorial Hermann Hospital, where Cox is director of the pediatric trauma program.All the children were treated within 48 hours of their injury with their own stem cells, which were collected from their bone marrow, processed and returned to them intravenously. UTHealth's Department of Neurology is also currently testing the same bone marrow stem cell procedure in adults with acute stroke. In a separate trial, Cox is testing the safety of using a patient's own cord blood stem cells for traumatic brain injury in children.

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Robot Teaches Stroke Survivors

ScienceDaily (Mar. 16, 2010) — Shaking hands with a robotic arm could be a new way to help stroke patients learn to use their arms again. Researchers writing in BioMed Central's open access Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation report a pilot trial of the 'Braccio di Ferro' (Iron arm) robot in 10 patients. Elena Vergaro, from the University of Genoa, Italy, worked with a team of researchers from the Italian Institute of Technology, Genoa, to develop the robotic aid. She said, "Our preliminary results from this small group of patients suggest that the scheme is robust and promotes a statistically significant improvement in performance. Future large-scale controlled clinical trials should confirm that robot-assisted physiotherapy can allow functional achievements in activities of daily life."

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Stem cell stroke therapy assessed

BBC News (Jan. 18, 2009) -- A Glasgow team is to launch a major trial to assess whether stem cells can be used to treat stroke patients, the BBC has learned.
They hope it will put the UK at the forefront of developing stem cell therapy for incurable disease.

Cells made from a human foetus will be injected into patients' brains.
It is hoped the cells will regenerate areas damaged by stroke, and increase patients' movements and mental abilities.

The trial, due to start in the middle of this year, will initially involve four groups of three patients over two years.

Doctors are primarily testing the safety of the procedure but there is the possibility that some patients may benefit from the treatment.

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Robotic Technology Improves Stroke Rehabilitation

ScienceDaily (Dec. 3, 2008) — Research scientists using a novel, hand-operated robotic device and functional MRI (fMRI) have found that chronic stroke patients can be rehabilitated, according to a study presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). This is the first study using fMRI to map the brain in order to track stroke rehabilitation.

"We have shown that the brain has the ability to regain function through rehabilitative exercises following a stroke," said A. Aria Tzika, Ph.D., director of the NMR Surgical Laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Shriners Burn Institute and assistant professor in the Department of Surgery at Harvard Medical School in Boston. "We have learned that the brain is malleable, even six months or more after a stroke, which is a longer period of time than previously thought."

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, stroke is the third leading cause of death in the U.S. and a principal cause of severe long-term disability. Approximately 700,000 strokes occur annually in the U.S., and 80 percent to 90 percent of stroke survivors have motor weakness.

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Brain Implants May Help Stroke Patients Overcome Partial Paralysis

ScienceDaily (Nov. 13, 2008) — Scientists have shown for the first time that neuroprosthetic brain implants may be able to help stroke patients with partial paralysis.

Researchers found that implants known as brain-computer interfaces (BCI) may be able to detect activity on one side of the brain that is linked to hand and arm movements on the same side of the body. They hope to use these signals to guide motorized assistance mechanisms that restore mobility in partially paralyzed limbs.

Partial paralysis on one side of the body results from stroke damage to the opposite side of the brain. This fits with the conventional model of how the brain controls movement, which says signals in one half of the brain control the opposite half of the body .

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New Hope for Stroke Patients: Reversing Stroke Damage By Jumpstarting Growth of Nerve Fibers

ScienceDaily
"If a stroke patient doesn't get treatment within approximately the first three hours of symptoms, there's not much doctors can do to limit damage to the brain. But now researchers report a technique that potentially could restore functions to patients weeks or even months after a stroke. The technique involves jumpstarting the growth of nerve fibers to compensate for brain cells destroyed by the stroke.

"In the best-case scenario, this would open up the window of time that people could recover and go back to normal functional status," said Gwendolyn Kartje, MD, Ph.D., a professor in the department of cell biology, neurobiology and anatomy and department of neurology at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine in Maywood, Ill. and chief of neuroscience research at Edward Hines Jr. VA Hospital in Hines, Ill."

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