Stroke Treatment Discovered, Dementia Studies Revealed

Statistics have shown that one of the biggest killers and main causes of disability in Australia is stroke. It is deadly as it can kill one person every nine minutes or approximately (more than) 50 000 people in a year. Australian researchers are always looking for new innovative and effective stroke treatments. Unfortunately, there’s less than 4% of funding support provided for stroke-related research. Despite that fact and lack of support, Associate Professor Bruce Campbell – a Clinical Council Chair from Stroke Foundation said that he welcomes any evidence-based research to help, avert, treat and defeat stroke. This journey has finally led to a possible answer of stroke treatment.

Moreover researchers in China and Melbourne, Dr Peng Lei and Professor Ashley Bush at Sichuan University and Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, are examining the specific type of protein that is always associated with the progression of Alzheimer’s disease. This type of protein is called tau protein and it serves to transport iron out of the brain cells. Through their study using pre-clinical animal models of ischaemic stroke, they have shown that tau protein is also involved in stroke. The lower the tau levels, the higher it builds-up iron in cells. The increase amount of iron creates a molecular pathway called ferroptosis and this leads to death of brain cells.

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Furthermore, Dr Lei and Professor Bush published their findings in Molecular Psychiatry, indicating that when tau level are markedly reduced eventually stroke will follow. Dr Lei also said that they have five different experimental drugs that are designed to either lower iron levels or block the ferroptosis pathway. In conclusion to their experiment, all the drugs helped prevent brain damage but the ferroptosis-inhibiting drugs performed best as it reduced the damaged area by more than half. Ischaemic strokes are caused by oxygen deprivation where blood vessels are blocked. In addition to their study, the process of getting the ferroptosis-inhibiting drugs to the system was done through the nose which allowed the direct and rapid uptake by the damaged cells.

Their research was welcomed by Professor Campbell in hopes to open a new and effective therapeutic way in treating acute ischaemic stroke. He said that it is a fascinating perception that iron may play a key role in ischaemic stroke.  Also, unexpected results that goes beyond the scope of research leading to new discoveries is similar in this case, where the study was mainly focused on dementia but throughout the experiment they discovered a new possible stroke treatment.