Category Archives: Neurology

(Reuters) - Men who love eating tomatoes may have lower odds of suffering a stroke, according to a Finnish study.

Researchers whose results appeared in the journal Neurology found that of the more than 1,000 older men they followed, those with relatively high blood levels of the antioxidant lycopene were less likely to have a stroke over a dozen years.

Lycopene is a chemical that gives a reddish hue to foods like tomatoes, red peppers, watermelon and papaya. For most people, tomatoes and tomato products are by far the biggest source of lycopene in the diet.

Lycopene is a "potent antioxidant," said lead researcher Jouni Karppi, a researcher at the University of Eastern Finland in Kuopio, which means it helps protect body cells from damage that can ultimately lead to disease.

Laboratory research also suggests that lycopene helps fight inflammation and blood clots, and may be better at it than other antioxidants.

But other researchers said the study does not prove that tomatoes alone can cut anyone's stroke risk, noting that there may be other things about men with high lycopene levels that could explain the lower chances of having a stroke.

The study looked at 1,031 men aged 46 to 55 who had their blood levels of lycopene, alpha- and beta-carotene, and vitamins E and A measured.

Over the next 12 years, there were 11 strokes among the one-quarter of men with the highest lycopene levels, compared to 25 among the one-quarter with the lowest levels.

The researchers also accounted for some major factors that affect stroke risk, like smoking, high blood pressure and diabetes - and the high-lycopene group still had a 55 percent lower risk of suffering a stroke.

"Studies like this are interesting, but they have significant limitations," said Larry Goldstein, director of the Duke Stroke Center and a professor at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina.

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Tomato compound tied to lower stroke risk: study

Use of cannabis extract helps ease painful muscle stiffness among patients with multiple sclerosis (MS), according to a large trial published on Tuesday in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry.

The "Phase III" test -- the final stage in a process to vet a new drug or medical process -- took place among 22 centres in Britain.

Over 12 weeks, 144 patients were given daily tablets of tetrahydrocannabinol, which is the active ingredient in cannabis, and 135 were given a dummy pill, also called a placebo.

Doses were gradually escalated, from 2.5 milligrams to a maximum of 25 mg for two weeks, following top-up doses for the remaining two weeks.

At the end of the study, 29.4 percent of people in the cannabis group said they had experienced relief from muscle spasms, compared to 15.7 percent in the placebo group, according to an 11-point rating.

They also reported improvement in sleep quality. Side effects were nervous system disorders and gut problems, but none was severe.

MS, a disease that affects the brain and spinal cord, occurs when the immune system attacks the fatty myelin sheaths that insulate nerve cells.

Painful stiffness in the muscles occurs among up to 90 percent of patients at some time, often leading to poor sleep and impaired mobility.

The trial, led by John Peter Zajicek of Britain's Clinical Neurology Research Group, says standardised doses of cannabis extract can be useful in easing pain and spasms in this disease.

Previous Phase III trials on cannabis and MS have thrown up conflicting results, partly because of the scale by which users report any change in their symptoms, the MUSEC researchers said.

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Cannabis eases sclerosis stiffness - study

Public release date: 8-Oct-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Rachel Seroka rseroka@aan.com 612-928-6129 American Academy of Neurology

MINNEAPOLIS Eating tomatoes and tomato-based foods is associated with a lower risk of stroke, according to new research published in the October 9, 2012, print issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Tomatoes are high in the antioxidant lycopene.

The study found that people with the highest amounts of lycopene in their blood were 55 percent less likely to have a stroke than people with the lowest amounts of lycopene in their blood.

The study involved 1,031 men in Finland between the ages of 46 and 65. The level of lycopene in their blood was tested at the start of the study and they were followed for an average of 12 years. During that time, 67 men had a stroke.

Among the men with the lowest levels of lycopene, 25 of 258 men had a stroke. Among those with the highest levels of lycopene, 11 of 259 men had a stroke. When researchers looked at just strokes due to blood clots, the results were even stronger. Those with the highest levels of lycopene were 59 percent less likely to have a stroke than those with the lowest levels.

"This study adds to the evidence that a diet high in fruits and vegetables is associated with a lower risk of stroke," said study author Jouni Karppi, PhD, of the University of Eastern Finland in Kuopio. "The results support the recommendation that people get more than five servings of fruits and vegetables a day, which would likely lead to a major reduction in the number of strokes worldwide, according to previous research."

The study also looked at blood levels of the antioxidants alpha-carotene, beta-carotene, alpha-tocopherol and retinol, but found no association between the blood levels and risk of stroke.

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The study was supported by Lapland Central Hospital.

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Can eating tomatoes lower the risk of stroke?

Editor's Choice Main Category: Neurology / Neuroscience Article Date: 08 Oct 2012 - 0:00 PDT

Current ratings for: New Agent May Protect Against Brain Damage After Stroke

At the beginning of their randomized, double-blind trial, the experts had set out to determine whether NA-1 was safe. They then focused their attention on injections of NA-1, and how these injections affected the number and volume of brain legions in stroke patients after surgery.

During the study, the researchers administered 185 patients who had just undergone surgery with either an intravenous infusion of NA-1 or a saline control - 92 of them received the NA-1 drug, while 93 participants were given the placebo. Throughout the following three days, the team performed MRIs on the patients to examine the degree of stroke legions present. To determine the results, the participants were followed-up 30 days later.

They wrote that NA-1 is effective and harmless for humans to use, in spite of two unfavorable occurrences where some of the participants were found to have transient low blood pressure caused by the new medication.

The authors also discovered that NA-1 was capable of lowering brain tissue impairment in the study participants. The patients who received the medication were found to have considerably fewer lesions than those who had been given the saline control. However, lesion volume was similar in the two groups.

Professor Michael Hill, lead author of the study, explained:

Our research, which builds on existing animal studies, suggests that intravenous infusion of NA-1 reduces tissue damage in patients who suffer a small stroke after an operation to repair a brain aneurysm, and further research is now needed to investigate the efficacy of neuroprotection in larger clinical trials."

Kaste said:

However, such drugs should first be assessed in large, well designed and well executed randomised placebo-controlled double-blind clinical trials. Only after such trials will we know whether NA-1 - or one of the other drugs which have shown comparable effects - is the long-awaited holy grail for the treatment of patients with ischaemic stroke. The door is now reopening for new neuroprotection trials in stroke."

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New Agent May Protect Against Brain Damage After Stroke

A new Mayo Clinic study confirms the use of smartphones medical images to evaluate stroke patients in remote locations through telemedicine. The study, the first to test the effectiveness of smartphone teleradiology applications in a real-world telestroke network, was recently published in Stroke, a journal of the American Heart Association.

Bart Demaerschalk, M.D., neurologist and medical director of Mayo Clinic Telestroke, shows us how the smartphone technology works:

Source:
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CasesBlog/~3/tSGF6AYs3fU/mayo-clinic-uses-smartphone-images-to.html

A new study suggests that mothers with high blood pressure during pregnancy might have a detrimental effect on their childs IQ. The research was published this week in the American Academy of Neurologys medical journal, Neurology.

The study found that men whose mothers blood pressure was high during pregnancy scored 4.36 points lower on thinking ability tests at age 69 than men whose mothers did not have high blood pressure. Researchers also found that these men scored lower than others at age 20 and had greater declines in their scores over time. This trend was seen most noticeably for math reasoning skills.

High blood pressure and related conditions such as preeclampsia complicate about 10 percent of all pregnancies and can affect a babys environment in the womb, said Dr. Katri Riknen, lead author of the study and professor of psychology at the University of Helsinki. Our study suggests that even declines in thinking abilities in old age could have originated during the prenatal period when the majority of the development of brain structure and function occurs.

The study looked at the medical records of mothers with high blood pressure during pregnancy for 398 men born between 1934 and 1944. The men were tested on their thinking abilities at age 20 and age 69. The tests included measurements of language skills, math reasoning, and visual and spatial relationships.

Researchers isolated other factors and found that premature birth did not affect the mens thinking abilities. Likewise, whether a mans father was a blue-collar or white-collar worker made no difference in his childs thinking abilities.

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High Blood Pressure Pregnancy Linked to Lower Child IQ, Study Finds