A new study has claimed that an injection given quickly to stroke and heart attack victims can drastically reduce the devastating effect these can cause to the sufferer. Both Strokes and Heart attacks can cause potentially fatal tissue damage to the brain cells and heart muscles. The initial attacks are caused by the blood flow being interrupted by a bleed or a clot and body parts are deprived of Oxygen.
Most of the long term damage occurs when the circulation starts to work again, and for whatever reason the body’s own defences then attack those cells that have been starved of Oxygen. Now British scientists have developed antibodies that greatly limit the damage. This achievement is now being translated into clinical therapies, and injections on animals are proving highly successful.
Professor Wilhelm Schwaeble, from the department of Infection, Immunity and Inflammation at Leicester University was the research leader in collaboration with the medical university of Fukushima Japan, Kings College London and New York’s State University. He said that this was a fascinating breakthrough in the constant search for new treatments that would reduce tissue damage and the impaired functions of organs.
He added this therapy had shown significant improvements in animals after transplant surgery and could become viable to any procedure where tissue damage is a risk due to the blood flow being temporarily interrupted.
