Grant: Operating Grant

Stroke devastates 50,000 Canadians each year. The aim of my research proposal is to evaluate the protective effects of mild therapeutic hypothermia (reduction in body temperature) on the brain damange caused by stroke. Hypothermia is a promising neuroprotective (cell saving) treatment that is used in cardiac arrest survivors and has much potential for stroke victims. Specifically, I will determine how effective hypothermia is following several types of stroke (e.g., ischemia, hemorrhage) and I will study how cooling the brain affects the brain's natural response to injury. Various neuroplasticity mechanisms are set in motion by brain injury. For instance, synaptogensis is an increase in the number of connections between existing cells. Such responses are stimulated after stroke and act to repair the brain to improve behavioral recovery. I wish to determine whether cooling the brain affects its natural neuroplasticity response (e.g., to impede it). Thus, I will use rat models of stroke and induce brief to prolonged cooling periods, as would be used clinically, to investigate how hypothermia affects brain injury and neuroplasticity. These findings should improve treatment choices in clinical trials of hypothermia for stroke.