Word: strokings
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...study expands on the idea that after a stroke occurs, certain brain cells that are not killed immediately by bursting blood vessels may be killed through exposure to compounds released by dying cells...
Another team of HMS researchers has discovered an early step in the stroke's deadly pathway. Their study, which has the potential to provide a potent new target for drug therapies, is published in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences...
Their research focuses on glutamate, an excitatory neurotransmitter. Scientists had believed that it might be possible to limit cell death after a stroke by stopping glutamate from killing neighboring cells, but until now, little was known about the intracellular routes through which glutamate carries out its deadly "excitotoxic" effects...
...press release, Allessandro Alessandrini, assistant biologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and a co-author of the study, says, "The exciting thing about this is not only that it deciphers an initial stage in the pathway of stroke, but also suggests that a pathway thought to be involved in cell proliferation may lead to damage early on in ischemia...
...that, on average, the region of cell death in mice receiving the ERK-blocking drug was 55 percent smaller than that of mice not given the drug. Alessandrini noted that in his study, the ERK-blocking drug was administered to the mice before or at the beginning of a stroke, a situation that may not be practical in humans. However, researchers believe that the findings do give hope for discovering other possible ways of stopping a stroke after it has begun...