New Treatment for Stroke Leads to Fewer Disabilities

Researchers at the Edith Wolfson Medical Center and Tel Aviv University in Israel have found that stroke patients who are treated with a drug called minocycline within from 6 to 24 hours after the onset of the stroke have a significant fewer number of disabilities. They feel that minocycline may be a good alternative treatment for stroke patients because the current treatments only work during the first few hours after the symptoms appear and many patients are not able to get to a hospital in time.

In the study, they had 152 participants, both men and women, who were broken down into two groups. For five days after they suffered their stroke, one group was given an oral does of minocycline and the other group received a placebo. The patients who received the minocycline were treated on an average of 13 hours after their stroke and those who received the placebo were treated on average 12 hours after their stroke. Both groups were followed for a period of 3 months.

The results showed that after the 3 months, the patients who were treated with minocycline performed four times better than the placebo group on the National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale. The Stroke Scale measures vision, facial palsy, movement, and speaking ability. The minocycline group came out with a score of 1.6, which is little or no disability. The placebo group had a score of 6.5 which is classified as a high end of mild disability.

The improvement shown by the patients who received the minocycline is not due to the ability of the drug as ananitbiotic, but rather its anti-inflammatory effect and its ability to protect brain cells from destruction. And none of the participants had any adverse effects from the drug.

Other studies have shown that minocycline has already been shown to have an effect in animal models of multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease, and Lou Gehrig's disease, or ALS.