Newsline — Tuesday, February 19, 2013 11:22
Ten U.S. Presidents Have Suffered Strokes While in or After Leaving Office
Ten-Year-Old Girl with Rare Form of Epilepsy Has Half Her Brain Removed
Friday, February 15, 2013 15:54
Imagine having a child with a rare neurological disease … and then being told that removing half the brain is the only treatment. This was the case for Seth Wohlberg, father of ten-year-old Grace, who learned that his daughter had Rasmussen’s Encephalitis — a rare form of epilepsy where extreme seizures require removal of one hemisphere of the brain. “You slowly learn through whispers that the only thing they really can do for this is this awful, radical surgery,” he told The Huffington Post. “Which you’re really trading, in a sense, an awful nightmare for just a bad dream. This disease unfolds in a very malicious fashion in that there’s no blood test, there’s no single MRI scan, there’s no CAT scan. It’s a diagnosis of exclusion that’s pieced together typically over several months.” After doing more research, Wohlberg decided on Gary W. Mathern, MD, FAANS, UCLA Professor of Pediatric Neurosurgery, to perform the surgery. For more information and to watch a interview with Seth Wohlberg on Huffington Post Live, click here.
Researchers Help Mice Recover from Stroke by ‘Rewiring’ Their Brains
Friday, February 15, 2013 9:58
Johns Hopkins researchers have found that mice can recover from physically debilitating strokes that damage the primary motor cortex, the region of the brain that controls most movement in the body, if the rodents are quickly subjected to physical conditioning that rapidly “rewires” a different part of the brain to take over lost function. Their research — featuring precise, intense and early treatment, and tantalizing clues to the role of a specific brain area in stroke recovery — is described online in the journal Stroke. “Despite all of our approved therapies, stroke patients still have a high likelihood of ending up with deficits,” says study leader Steven R. Zeiler, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of neurology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “This research allows us the opportunity to test meaningful training and pharmacological ways to encourage recovery of function, and should impact the care of patients.” For more information, click here to read the full release.
Collaborative Spine Research Foundation Gets Three-Year Grant from Medtronic
Thursday, February 14, 2013 13:00
The Collaborative Spine Research Foundation (Collaborative Spine) announced today an agreement to receive up to $7 million over the next three years to fund cross-disciplinary spinal research from Medtronic’s Spine business. The final amount of the grant will be contingent on Collaborative Spine‘s ability to engage additional industry support for its research agenda. Collaborative Spine will use the funding to award competitive, multi-year grants for independent, investigator-driven clinical spine research studies. Collaborative Spine, a 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 2011 by the Neurosurgery Research and Education Foundation and the Orthopaedic Research and Education Foundation to advance the science and practice of the highest-quality spine care. For more information, click here to read the full release.
Abnormal Protein May Help Detect Lou Gehrig’s Disease (ALS), Dementia
Thursday, February 14, 2013 9:35
Mayo Clinic researchers have found an abnormal protein that accumulates in the brains of many patients affected with two common neurodegenerative disorders — amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (also known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease) and frontotemporal dementia. They say their findings have uncovered a potentially new therapeutic target and biomarker that would allow clinicians to confirm diagnosis of the diseases. The study appears online in the journal Neuron. The Mayo research team, led by scientists at Mayo Clinic’s campus in Florida, discovered the abnormal protein pathology that they call C9RANT. An error in the highly regulated cellular process through which proteins are generated causes the abnormal production of C9RANT. The team developed an antibody that can detect the specific, insoluble protein that clumps together and is present in patients with mutations in the C9ORF72 gene — previously identified by Mayo Clinic researchers as the most common genetic cause of ALS and frontotemporal dementia. For more information, click here to read the full release.
Deep Brain Therapy Benefits May Remain When Device Is Off for Dystonia Patients
Wednesday, February 13, 2013 13:27
Two patients freed from severe to disabling effects of dystonia through deep brain stimulation (DBS) therapy continued to have symptom relief for months after their devices accidentally were fully or partly turned off — that’s according to a report published online Feb. 11 in the journal Movement Disorders. “Current thought is that symptoms will worsen within hours or days of device shut-off, but these two young men continued to have clinical benefit despite interruption of DBS therapy for several months,” says Senior Author Michele Tagliati, MD, director of the Movement Disorders Program at Cedars-Sinai’s Department of Neurology. “To our knowledge, these two cases represent the longest duration of retained benefit in primary generalized dystonia. Moreover, when these patients’ symptoms did return, severity was far milder than it was before DBS.” For more information, click here to read the full release.
Strokes After Surgery Can Result in Longer Hospital Stays, Increased Risk of Death
Wednesday, February 13, 2013 10:24
Strokes that occur during or shortly after surgery can be devastating, resulting in longer hospital stays and increased risks of death or long-term disability. However, prompt identification and treatment of such strokes can improve neurologic outcomes, according to an article by Loyola University Medical Center stroke specialists Sarkis Morales-Vidal, MD, and Michael Schneck, MD, that appears in the journal Expert Review of Neurotherapeutics. The article answers commonly asked questions about the management of perioperative stroke — a stroke that occurs anytime between the time a patient is hospitalized for surgery until the patient is discharged from the hospital. For more information, click here to read the full release.
Football and Head Injuries: Experts Say No Device Eliminates Concussion Risk
Tuesday, February 12, 2013 15:31
As the long-term consequences of concussions become clearer, a cottage industry has popped up to sell athletes and worried parents products designed to mitigate risks of concussions that even helmets cannot prevent. Despite the bold claims of some companies, however, experts say the Holy Grail in contact sports — a device that prevents concussions — simply does not exist. Indeed, they note, there is no proof that any current device significantly reduces the risk of concussions beyond the protections already provided by helmets. ABC’s “Nightline” found several products for sale online that aim to reduce the risk of concussions or even alert parents and coaches when a kid has supposedly taken a concussion-level hit. The claims the manufacturers make often are breathtakingly reassuring, “Nightline” reports. For more information, click here to read the full release.
Collaborative Spine Research Foundation to Fund $10M in Research Projects
Tuesday, February 12, 2013 10:01
The Collaborative Spine Research Foundation (Collaborative Spine) — a non-profit 501(c)(3) grant administration and research organization, formed through a collaborative alliance between the Neurosurgery Research and Education Foundation (NREF) and the Orthopaedic Research and Education Foundation (OREF) to advance the science and practice of the highest-quality spine care through the collaborative funding and support of clinical research — has announced a new funding opportunity announcement (FOA). The Collaborative Spine FOA soliciting research grant applications for clinical spine research will provide up to $10 million dollars for original research projects that address the 10 topics included in Collaborative Spine’s research agenda, available online at www.csrfoundation.net/CSRFresearchagenda.html. Research areas include assessment, methods and processes of spine care. Funding will be for projects of one to three years in duration, at an amount up to $300,000 per year. A second-round FOA, targeted for high-priority research topics, is anticipated for the fall of 2013. Collaborative Spine anticipates research grant solicitations to be published by May 1, 2013, with funding to commence by Sept. 1, 2013. For more information, click here…
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Minimally Invasive Drug Leads to Better Post-Stroke Results Than Supportive Therapy Alone
Monday, February 11, 2013 14:37
In an update to prior research, Johns Hopkins neurologists say minimally invasive delivery of the drug tPA directly into potentially lethal blood clots in the brain has helped more patients function independently one year after suffering an intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) — a deadly and debilitating form of stroke. Rates of functional recovery with the active tPA treatment have far surpassed those achieved with standard “supportive” therapy that essentially gives clots a chance to shrink on their own. In the current Johns Hopkins-led study, ICH patients who randomly received the minimally invasive surgery to deliver a drug designed to dissolve their golf ball-sized clots checked out of the hospital an average of 38 days sooner than those who received supportive therapy. In addition to the health benefits, the tPA therapy and resulting shortened hospital stay led to an estimated savings of $44,000 per patient, according to researchers. ICH has long been considered surgically untreatable under most circumstances; roughly 50 percent of people who have this type of stroke die from it. For more information, click here to…
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