Depressed Metabolism

In a review of the 1998 21st Century Medicine seminars, Cryonics Institute president Ben Best writes:
“The presentations impressed upon me how much witchcraft and how little science has gone into the study of cryoprotectant agents (CPAs). This might be understandable in light of the fact that most cryobiologists are, in fact, biologists. I suspect [...]

A recent study in Rejuvenation Research reports that a combination of dietary supplements confer neuroprotection in stroke. Over a 2 week period rats received either a proprietary formulation of blueberry, green tea, Vitamin D3, and carnosine  called NT-020 or vehicle (i.e., the same solution minus the compounds of interest) before stroke was induced through middle [...]

Induction of hypothermia can reduce injury to the brain when it is deprived of oxygen. How fast do we need to cool a patient during cardiac arrest or stroke to prevent irreversible injury to the brain?
It is an established fact that induction of hypothermia prior, during, or after circulatory arrest can reduce brain injury. As [...]

Cryopreservation of the brain depends on the removal of blood from the brain’s vasculature and its replacement with cryoprotective solutions in order to prevent ice crystal formation (freezing) during cooling (i.e., facilitate vitrification). Ultimately, the success of a good cryoprotectant is limited by perfusability of the brain, or the ability of cryoprotective solutions to penetrate [...]

Neuroprotective agents for stroke continue to fail in clinical trials. One important reason is that the therapeutic window for many of those agents is too narrow to confer benefits to acute stroke victims. It would be desirable to have a potent neuroprotectant agent that has a wide therapeutic window, few side effects, and can be [...]

The blog Practical Ethics reports on pioneering research from a group of scientists in Cambridge who are using fMRI scans to study the brains of people who have been diagnosed as being in a vegetative condition. A Persistent Vegetative State (PVS) is a condition that is characterized by a state of wakefulness without [...]

The journal Neuropharmacology recently published a new review of the current state of the art in neuroprotection for ischemic stroke. A strict definition of a neuroprotectant excludes agents that have as their goal circulatory patency or the reversal of vascular occlusion, such as thrombolytics and anticoagulants. As a consequence, the only medication that is approved [...]

In an effort to determine why so many cytoprotective treatments for stroke that are shown to be promising in laboratory animal experiments ultimately fail in human clinical trials, DeBow et al. performed an analysis of cytoprotection studies published in several leading journals. While noting that limitations in preclinical assessments also contribute to the premature advancement [...]

L-Kynurenine (L-KYN) is one of the neuroprotective agents used in cryonics stabilization protocol to limit injury to the brain after cardiac arrest. Administration of L-KYN was perceived to be essential to resuscitate dogs from extended periods (up to 17 minutes) of normothermic ischemia during the Critical Care Research (CCR) cerebral resuscitation experiments in the [...]

Elevation of body temperature occurring as a result of hypothalamic coordination of autonomic, neuroendocrine, and behavioral responses in reaction to physiological injury or invasion is generally known as fever. Traditional thought is that the “febrile response” is beneficial in preventing the proliferation of invading microorganisms, but some caregivers consider fever to be harmful and prescribe [...]

One consequence of the growing understanding of the biochemical pathways involved in brain injury resulting from cardiac arrest, stroke, and brain trauma is that there is an increasing consensus among researchers that combination therapy is the most logical treatment for the multifactorial injury mechanisms responsible for neuronal death. In this context, combination therapy can [...]

In their paper “The role of leukocytes following cerebral ischemia: pathogenic variable or bystander reaction to emerging infarct?” D.F. Emerich et al. review the literature on the involvement of neutrophils in cerebral ischemia:
“We reasoned that if neutrophils play an important pathogenic (i.e., cause-effect) role in the neuronal damage that follows a stroke, then one should [...]