Name: Arshad Majid, associate professor of neurology and the director of the division of cerebrovascular diseases.
Department: Neurology
Date of research: Work was started about a year ago.
Type of research: Common dietary supplement used to reduce the severity of a stroke.
Basics of research: Majid and other researchers are experimenting with a dietary supplement called Carnosine, which is a diet peptide that combines two amino acids.
The testing is done on mice in hopes of finding what happens when cells die and how cells can be protected in the brain in case of a stroke.
"Basically we used a mouse model where we can selectively include a critical artery in the brain that supplies blood to the mouse brain," Majid said. "We gave the mice a drug before they had a stroke and even after they had the stroke, we found we can reduce the size of stroke by about 50 percent."
There needs to be a few more tests done on the mice to find the optimal dose needed, he said. After the correct dose is found Majid and researchers will start human studies.
Social impact of research: Strokes are such a common disease, Majid said.
"It is estimated that someone has a stroke every 53 seconds," Majid said. "So if we know someone is at high risk of having a stroke, we can put them on this medicine, and the hope would be they would have a smaller stroke or not have one at all."
Other stroke medications have too many side effects to be used for prevention, Majid said. Carnosine has little to no side effects and is found naturally within the body.
"EMS can start this medication before the patient gets to the hospital," Majid said.
It may take half an hour to get to a hospital, and the more time lost, the more severe the brain damage may be, he said.
Difficulties of this research: Being able to find funding for the research is one of the hardest aspect of the study, Majid said.
"Drug companies are not going to be interested in this medication because it is already on the market, Majid said. "We are going to have to find people either in the community or maybe the National Institutes of Health to fund a study like this."
Weird/unknown fact: "Humans are different from mice, and the results may not translate," Majid said. "We might metabolize it faster or the medicine might just not work on humans."
Funding for the research: The study is going to require about $50,000 to $100,000, Majid said. About $500,000 will be needed for future testing involving humans.
