Access

News and Views


Nature Medicine 10, 1295 - 1296 (2004)
doi:10.1038/nm1204-1295

Combination stroke therapy: easy as APC?

Eng H Lo1

  1. The author is in the Neuroprotection Research Laboratory, Departments of Radiology and Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital and the Program in Neuroscience, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. e-mail: Lo@helix.mgh.harvard.edu


The US Food and Drug Administration has approved only one therapy for ischemic stroke, recombinant tissue plasminogen activator (tPA), which can increase blood flow to damaged brain tissue—but it can also have severe side effects and must be administered shortly after stroke. Experiments combining the drug with activated protein C (APC) may provide a solution (pages 1379–1383).


Ischemic stroke is caused by a blood clot that lodges in the brain and chokes off oxygen supply to critical tissue. The clot-busting drug recombinant tPA can save lives and diminish disability, but its use is limited to about 3–4 percent of all stroke patients in the USA.

MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS

These links to content published by NPG are automatically generated.

NEWS AND VIEWS

Taming the clot-buster tPA

Nature Medicine News and Views (01 Sep 2006)

Remodeling after stroke

Nature Medicine News and Views (01 Apr 2006)

See all 3 matches for News And Views
$rb.Type.Code