New treatment results in less brain damage following stroke

Stroke patients will be welcoming the news of a discovery by a University of Alberta scientist that may have significant future implications for treatment of the disease. Dr. Fred Colbourne, from the Faculty of Science, has shown that a novel rehabilitation regimen has proven remarkably effective in promoting recovery in hemorrhagic stroke–or ruptured blood vessels–in rats.

Pediatric Anesthesia Causes Brain Damage in Infant Rats

A team of researchers has found that drugs commonly used to anesthetize children can cause brain damage and long-term learning and memory disturbances in infant rats. The researchers report their findings in the Feb. 1 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience. “We frequently perform surgical procedures on children, including premature infants, and those procedures have become increasingly more complex and take longer to perform,” says the study’s lead author Vesna Jevtovic-Todorovic, M.D., associate professor of anesthesiology at the University of Virginia Health System. “That means many pediatric patients are being exposed to anesthetic drugs more frequently and for longer periods of time. Our results would suggest that might be problematic.”