Researchers are exploring the possibility that the anesthetic agent isoflurane can help to protect a patient's brain following a stroke involving intracerebral hemorrhage.
Sparked by previous studies' findings that inhalational anesthetic agents have the ability to prevent the death of cells, including brain cells, in the wake of an ischemic stroke, physicians at the Loma Linda University Medical Center in Loma Linda, Calif., conducted a clinical study on mice in whom intracerebral hemorrhages had been induced.
The group of mice who were acutely treated with low-dose (1.5%) isoflurane for either 1 or 2 hours following their injuries exhibited reduced swelling and cell death in their brains, as compared to the group which received no treatment. The anesthetic was also found to reduced neurobehavioral abnormalities.
"Our results suggest that isoflurane may be an effective posttreatment therapeutic option for ICH because of its ability to reduce structural damage and subsequently preserve functional integrity," the researchers write in the August issue of the journal Anesthesia & Analgesia.
At present, there is no clinically viable therapy for treating stroke-ruptured blood vessels in the brain, which leave 40% to 50% of patients dead within a month and the rest functionally or behaviorally disabled.
David Bernard
