X-Message-Number: 27063 Date: Fri, 16 Sep 2005 21:03:48 +0200 From: Eugen Leitl <> Subject: [: [GRG] Heart attacks, stroke & neuronal cell death] ----- Forwarded message from "Robert J. Bradbury" <> ----- From: "Robert J. Bradbury" <> Date: Fri, 16 Sep 2005 10:13:38 -0700 (PDT) To: Gerontology Research Group <> Subject: [GRG] Heart attacks, stroke & neuronal cell death Reply-To: Gerontology Research Group <> It is worth observing that probably more than 50% of all deaths are due to neuronal death after ischemic/hypoxic insult (e.g. the ultimate cause of death from heart attacks and strokes). This is also the cause of significant levels of disability (and therefore medical expense) in those cases where the heart attacks or strokes do not happen to be fatal. We have relatively good means at this point for dissolving clots preventing the blood from reaching neurons and for promoting clots in the case of hemmorhagic stroke. What we do not have a good handle on is preventing the neuron death associated with the ischemic/hypoxic insult. PNAS has an article today [1], that begins to get a handle on this. It appears that rapid (excitotoxic) component of neuron death regulated by p35 and cdk5 while the delayed (apoptotic-like) component is regulated by cyclinD1 and cdk4. This is actually quite good news as it starts to give you targets which can be impacted by drugs. Given the severe negative consequences of neuronal cell death and the transitory nature of any drug therapy (just long enough to allow the neurons to return to a normal state) one would hope that the development of drug therapies to manage these pathways would be quite rapid. Robert 1. Juliet Rashidian, et al, PNAS, 10.1073/pnas.0500099102 "Multiple cyclin-dependent kinases signals are critical mediators of ischemia/hypoxic neuronal death in vitro and in vivo" http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/0500099102v1?etoc _______________________________________________ GRG mailing list http://xxxxxxx.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/grg ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=27063