New research is taking a look at using umbilical cord blood to improve the speed of recovery after an ischaemic stroke. The project hopes to improve the rate that the brain recovers after a stroke.

The research will be led by Dr John J. Volpi, who is the co-director of the Houston Methodist Eddy Scurlock Stroke Center. Dr Volpi suggests this is the first umbilical cord blood study of this type, saying, “While previous studies have evaluated the safety of using certain types of stem cells from umbilical cord blood in stroke recovery, this is the first to study the use of whole umbilical cord blood in ischemic stroke patients.”

Dr Volpi believes that the primitive stem cells from umbilical cord blood can be used to quickly reduce swelling in the brain after a stroke. This will reduce the number of brain cells that are killed after a stroke.

In the United States, more than 87% of all strokes are ischemic strokes — where a clot prevents blood from flowing to the brain. Because the brain is starved of oxygen-rich blood, brain cells begin to die and there is a substantial level of swelling. While there are drugs which can easily remove the clots, the brain will continue to lose brain cells while it is inflamed. There are approximately 690,000 ischaemic strokes in the United States each year.

The study will give patients stem cells from umbilical cord blood within 10-days of their stroke to reduce inflammation. They will then be tracked for a year to determine if the transfusion helped them recover quicker.

The research is going to be performed in collaboration with Duke University and Emory University. The umbilical cord blood stem cells will be provided by The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

Source: Using Umbilical Cord Blood to Speed Stroke Recovery

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