Cord Blood Treatment for Stroke

An experimental cord blood treatment prevents disability from acute stroke in rats and can be delivered much later than the current three-hour deadline, an advance that may benefit more stroke victims. The results were presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Washington, DC (USA) in November 2005.

Researchers at the University of South Florida (USF, Tampa, USA) administered human umbilical cord blood cells to rats two days after they had suffered a stroke, which curbed the brain's inflammatory response. As a result, the size of the stroke was reduced and recovery was very much improved. The inflammatory response to injury from stroke peaked 48 hours after the brain attack, which was when the delivery of the cells did the most good.

"We were very surprised,” said principal investigator Alison Willing, Ph.D., a neuroscientist at the USF Center of Excellence for Aging and Brain Repair. "In some animals, the stroke initially damaged half of the brain, but after treatment with the cord blood cells, they were functioning normally. These findings show we are able to rescue neurons at a time when most research suggests they are already dead.”

Currently, the only approved treatment for ischemic stroke is tissue plasminogen activator (tPA), which breaks up blood clots but must be administered within three hours following a stroke to be effective. Few patients arrive at the hospital quickly enough to receive it. The new study challenges the notion that nerve cells inevitably die quickly in the core region of the brain most deprived of oxygen and nutrients when hit by a stroke. Instead, it appears that many die slowly over several days through apoptosis.

The researchers announced that they will begin a study to determine the timing of brain inflammatory responses in acute stroke patients.