Officials at UW-Madison's School of Medicine are nearing acceptance into a late-stage clinical trial that would allow them to test a promising new drug for stroke victims.
Doctors have used the drug since the late 1990s to treat hemophilia, but researchers led by Stephan Mayer at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons have been testing its effectiveness against one form of stroke. A stroke occurs when the brain is deprived of oxygen, resulting in the irreversible death of nerve cells that control movement and other functions.
The most common form, occurring in 70 to 80 percent of cases, is ischemic stroke, in which a blood clot blocks an artery and cuts off blood flow to a part of the brain. Ischemic stroke, if treated within three hours, can be mitigated by \clot busters"" that dissolve the clot before long-term complications develop, according to the American Heart Association's website.
The other main form of stroke is intracerebral hemorrhage, in which a blood vessel ruptures and leaks blood into the brain.
Until now, there has been no treatment for hemorrhagic stroke, which accounts for 10 to 15 percent of the 700,000 strokes in the U.S. annually. Now treatment options suddenly look more promising.
The drug in question is recombinant activated factor VII, or Novo VII after its maker Novo Nordisk. Instead of a clot buster, Novo VII is a ""clot maker.""
""They're yin and yang,"" said Madeleine Geraghty, clinical stroke fellow at the UW-Madison School of Medicine, of the two contrasting drug mechanisms. ""With intracerebral hemorrhage, you don't want to thin the blood further-you want the blood cells to gently adhere to each other instead of spilling into the brain.""
This mechanism also helps hemophiliacs, whose blood generally lacks the ability to clot.
Novo VII is already showing promise for stroke victims. Of patients who received it within four hours of stroke, 18 percent died within 90 days, compared with 29 percent of those who received a placebo. The study was published in this week's issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.
""This literally looks like it might be a magic bullet if you get it in soon enough,"" said Mayer, the study's lead author.
Larry Goldstein, a spokesperson for the American Heart Association and director of the stroke center at Duke University Medical Center, agreed.
""This is certainly a glimmer of hope, to say the least,"" Goldstein told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. ""It is exciting that there may be something we can do.\
