New Stroke Treatment Passes Safety Trial
All new drugs and treatments must pass a safety clinical trial before their effectiveness can be studied by the doctors. Web site of journal of the American Heart Association, Stroke has published the results of safety stage trial of a new stroke treatment funded by Stem Cell Therapeutics and the National Center for Research Resources. The UC Irvine neurologist, Dr. Steven C. Cramer who led the clinical trial said that the new treatment to regenerate brain cells that were damaged by stroke has passed a highly important safety trial and that patients who were administered growth factors stimulating the production of neurons in areas of the brain affected by stroke have not shown any adverse effects. Even more, the majority of patients who participated in the trial had insignificant or any disability three months after going through the new stroke treatment.
The new stroke treatment safety study was conducted by Dr. Steven C. Cramer in association with doctors from UC Irvine Medical Center, Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach and the University of Calgary (Canada). 15 patients who participated in the study were administered beta-hCG, hormone which stimulates neural stem cell growth and erythropoietin, hormone that guides the neural stem cells to differentiate into neurons. Within two days after suffering an ischemic stroke, the patients were administered three beta-hCG injections once per day and then three once-daily erythropoietin injections. The combination of the mentioned growth factors which has been proven to lead to recovery of movement in animal studies has shown no safety concerns in humans.
Despite the exciting results from the animal studies and safety clinical trial in humans the new stroke treatment now must pass the phase IIb clinical trial in which its effects will be compared with those in placebo.
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