A Concerted Appeal for International Cooperation in Preclinical Stroke Research
Stroke Reports Tuesday, April 23rd, 2013AHA Stroke: April 18, 2013
The global burden of stroke on patients, their relatives, health systems, and the economies that support them is tremendous. In an unprecedented move, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations have responded to this challenge by declaring the fight against stroke a top pri- ority in their drive to prevent and to control noncommunicable diseases.2 Indeed, great progress has been made in our under- standing of stroke pathophysiology. This has led to the devel- opment of thrombolysis, a highly efficient therapy for a subset of patients with acute ischemic stroke. We came to realize that the responses of brain tissue to substrate deprivation are com- plex, and that not only neurons need to be considered but also glial and vascular cells, as well as local or blood-derived cells of the immune system.3–5 We now know that ischemia triggers a multitude of endogenous protective mechanisms in the brain which help to contain the ischemic lesion evolution and pro- tect the brain from further damage. Read more