Jun 29, 2018
Written by Anita Wiseman │ First appeared on WSO blog
After sixty-two years of officially categorizing stroke as a Disease of the Circulatory System, the newly published WHO ICD 11, has correctly classified stroke as a Disease of the Nervous System
ICD 11 is a foundation document for health policy and treatment globally and the decision on stroke classification has been warmly welcomed by the World Stroke Organisation. WSO actively advocated for the change, arguing that positioning stroke as a disease of the brain will support global efforts to increase recognition of stroke and improve access to services and treatments that save lives and reduce post-stroke disabilities. Stroke was responsible for 14m deaths and 116 DALYS in 2016 alone, directing attention to the brain and what can be done to reduce premature deaths.
To find out more about why the WSO has made it a priority to achieve this change, I talked to Bo Norrving, Chair of the organization’s Global Policy Committee. Bo has also been chair of the Cerebrovascular Diseases group for the ICD 11 and is a member of the WHO Neurology Topical Advisory Group, chaired by Raad Shakir.
Why does it really matter that stroke is classified as a brain disease, not a disease of the circulatory system – aren’t the two closely related?
It’s true that there are close links between cardiovascular disease and stroke; many risk factors are shared and primary prevention will target both disorders jointly. We work closely with colleagues in the Non-Communicable Disease (NCD) and cardiovascular (CVD) sphere to advance our common prevention agenda.
The simple fact, however, is that when strokes happen, they happen in the brain.
Delivering stroke treatment early and efficiently with effective acute therapies such as thrombolytic therapy and thrombectomy, depends on the early recognition of symptoms from the brain and early actions to call an ambulance. This is why in many countries campaigns to increase public knowledge of stroke symptoms (like the FAST campaign) have been conducted. These campaigns are founded on in recognition that ‘time is brain’. Similarly, providing early treatment of transient ischemic attacks (TIAs), which are linked to stroke and are a significant contributing factor to dementia, depends on public awareness of the symptoms and rapid admittance to hospital.
The impact of delivering effective treatment for acute stroke – and the opportunity to prevent a stroke – present huge opportunities to reduce the global burden of disease and cannot be missed if we are to are to achieve global goals on NCD reduction. Thinking beyond prevention, understanding the role of the brain in residual stroke symptoms and disabilities from stroke is critically important to providing patients with effective long-term rehabilitation and support.
Classifying stroke under diseases of the circulatory system has kept stroke in the shadows where it couldn’t easily be seen or dealt with. We are delighted that this is no longer the case and that more light can be cast to the specifics of stroke and the opportunities we have to improve prevention and treatment.
How do you think this change will help with the achievement the global goal to reduce avoidable deaths from stroke?
Stroke is the second biggest killer and the largest single cause of disability worldwide and yet still struggles to get the policy attention and resources commensurate with its global impact. Identifying stroke as a disease of the brain and pulling all types of cerebro-vascular diseases into a single block in the ICD 11 will, we believe, guide policy attention to the right place and enable us to develop 21st century services for stroke.
Stroke is probably the best example there is of a non-communicable disease that is highly preventable and highly treatable. With the right focus and commitment to stroke we can make a massive impact on the achievement of global health and development goals .
Jun 29, 2018
On 28th June 2018 SAFE held its third and final Regional Conference of 2018. This conference was attended by delegates from 18 stroke support organisations.
Apart from an interactive session about the SSOFT project, Angels Initiative, Stroke Action Plan for Europe and other SAFE projects, the delegates had an opportunity to present their national activities, same as in the previous two Regional Conferences in Madrid and Dublin.
The fact that we had so many delegates made this Regional Conference different from the previous two, making it more similar to our Working Conference and the General Assembly.
The Regional Conference Prague was chaired by SAFE Vice President Markus Wagner from German stroke support organisation Stiftung Deutsche Schlaganfall-Hilfe.
SAFE Board member Anita Arsovska from Macedonia chaired the afternoon session with presentations from our SSOs.
You can find albums with photos from all three Regional Conferences on SAFE Facebook page.
SAFE’s regional conferences continue to be sponsored by Boehringer Ingelheim, and we are grateful for their support.
Jun 24, 2018
First appeared on ScienceDaily.com
Paralysis of an arm and/or leg is one of the most common effects of a stroke. But thanks to research carried out by scientists at the Defitech Foundation Chair in Brain-Machine Interface, in association with other members of EPFL’s Center for Neuroprothetics, the Clinique Romande de Réadaptation in Sion, and the Geneva University Hospitals, stroke victims may soon be able to recover greater use of their paralyzed limbs. The scientists’ pioneering approach brings together two known types of therapies — a brain-computer interface (BCI) and functional electrical stimulation (FES) — and has been published in Nature Communications.
“The key is to stimulate the nerves of the paralyzed arm precisely when the stroke-affected part of the brain activates to move the limb, even if the patient can’t actually carry out the movement. That helps reestablish the link between the two nerve pathways where the signal comes in and goes out,” says José del R. Millán, who holds the Defitech Chair at EPFL.
Twenty-seven patients aged 36 to 76 took part in the clinical trial. All had a similar lesion that resulted in moderate to severe arm paralysis following a stroke occurring at least ten months earlier. Half of the patients were treated with the scientists’ dual-therapy approach and reported clinically significant improvements. The other half were treated only with FES and served as a control group.
For the first group, the scientists used a BCI system to link the patients’ brains to computers using electrodes. That let the scientists pinpoint exactly where the electrical activity occurred in the brain tissue when the patients tried to reach out their hands. Every time that the electrical activity was identified, the system immediately stimulated the arm muscle controlling the corresponding wrist and finger movements. The patients in the second group also had their arm muscles stimulated, but at random times. This control group enabled the scientists to determine how much of the additional motor-function improvement could be attributed to the BCI system.
Reactivated tissue
The scientists noted a significant improvement in arm mobility among patients in the first group after just ten one-hour sessions. When the full round of treatment was completed, some of the first-group patients’ scores on the Fugl-Meyer Assessment — a test used to evaluate motor recovery among patients with post-stroke hemiplegia — were over twice as high as those of the second group.
“Patients who received the BCI treatment showed more activity in the neural tissue surrounding the affected area. Due to their plasticity, they could help make up for the functioning of the damaged tissue,” says Millán.
Electroencephalographies (EEGs) of the patients clearly showed an increase in the number of connections among the motor cortex regions of their damaged brain hemisphere, which corresponded with the increased ease in carrying out the associated movements. What’s more, the enhanced motor function didn’t seem to diminish with time. Evaluated again 6-12 months later, the patients hadn’t lost any of their recovered mobility.
Story Source: Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. “A dual-therapy approach to boost motor recovery after a stroke.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 20 June 2018. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/06/180620094808.htm>.
Jun 22, 2018
On 21st June 2018 SAFE held its second Regional Conference of 2018. This conference was attended by more than 20 delegates from UK, Ireland, Greece, Cyprus, Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and France.
Once again, the SSOFT project was presented to our delegates, in a form of an interactive workshop.
This e-learning tool is available online at www.ssoft.info and can be accessed anywhere, by anyone with an Internet connection. It is designed to be compatible with multiple devices including computers, smart phones and tablets. The information is structured into six e-learning modules that cover information ranging from: introducing the key principles of an
SSO through the use of data to create effective messages, to approaches to developing positive and impactful public and health advocacy campaigns. The modules contain a mixture of videos, presentations and animations, ensuring that it is accessible for all, in particular stroke survivors.
Module 1, 2, and 3 are now available with modules 4, 5 and 6 being released between August and November this year.
SAFE President, Jon Barrick, presented SAFE’s success stories and projects from the past year, with a special focus on projects that are being developed in this year. The most important among them, the Stroke Action Plan for Europe was launched at ESOC 2018 in Gothenburg and in the EU Parliament in May 2018. SAFE is now working on a popular version of this comprehensive document, hoping to present it towards the end of the year. The popular version will be written in a lay-friendly manner and available for our members for further translation and dissemination, as per the Burden of Stroke Report in 2017.
One of the sessions was delivered by our sponsor, Boehringer Ingelheim, bringing updates and providing information on new developments with the Angels Initiative project.
There will be a new approach in this project and the target audience will be quite different to what we are used to in the stroke world. For more information and a sneak peek into the new branding, please visit www.angels-initiative.com and join their community.
The next SAFE Regional Conference and the final one for this year will be held in Prague on 28th June.
SAFE’s regional conferences continue to be sponsored by Boehringer Ingelheim, and we are grateful for their support.
Jun 20, 2018
First appeared on oruen.com
Every 30 minutes a stroke patient who could have been saved, dies or is permanently disabled, because they were treated in the wrong hospital.
Angels Initiative is building a global community of stroke centers and stroke-ready hospitals, working every day to improve the quality of treatment for every stroke patient.
The goal is to get 1500 stroke-ready hospitals around the world by May 2019.
Please click on the photo bellow to access the series of the Angels ESOC 2018 symposium videos:
For more information about Angels Initiative, please visit www.angels-initiative.com
Jun 19, 2018
First appeared on ScienceDaily.com
For every three individuals who have had a stent implanted to keep clogged arteries open and prevent a heart attack, at least one will experience restenosis — the renewed narrowing of the artery due to plaque buildup or scarring — which can lead to additional complications.
Now, a team led by UBC electrical and computer engineering professor Kenichi Takahata has developed a type of “smart stent” that monitors even subtle changes in the flow of blood through the artery, detecting the narrowing in its earliest stages and making early diagnosis and treatment possible.
“We modified a stent to function as a miniature antenna and added a special micro-sensor that we developed to continuously track blood flow. The data can then be sent wirelessly to an external reader, providing constantly updated information on the artery’s condition,” said Takahata.
The device uses medical-grade stainless steel and looks similar to most commercial stents. Researchers say it’s the first angioplasty-ready smart stent — it can be implanted using current medical procedures without modifications.
Research collaborator Dr. York Hsiang, a UBC professor of surgery and a vascular surgeon at Vancouver General Hospital, noted that monitoring for restenosis is critical in managing heart disease.
“X-rays such as CT or diagnostic angiograms, which are the standard tools for diagnosis, can be impractical or inconvenient for the patient,” said Hsiang. “Putting a smart stent in place of a standard one can enable physicians to monitor their patient’s health more easily and offer treatment, if needed, in a timely manner.”
The device prototype was successfully tested in the lab and in a swine model. Takahata, who holds patents for the technology, says his team is planning to establish industry partnerships to further refine the device, put it through clinical trials and eventually commercialize it.
Story Source: University of British Columbia. “‘Smart stent’ detects narrowing of arteries.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 19 June 2018. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/06/180619123000.htm>.
Jun 14, 2018
The new updated HEILAHEILL home page with purple color
The excellent performance of HEILAHEILL’s activities in Icelandic society 2017-2018, has had a good result in raising public awareness about the consequences of suffering a stroke with a special version and distribution of an impressive smartphone app.
By doing so, the association gained attention from the public, not only about the stroke itself, but also about the risk factors that lead to stroke trauma. Last year, the association has been in close cooperation with the media; the Organisation of the Disabled in Iceland, (which is the umbrella organization of most patient associations in the country); professionals; doctors; neurologists pioneering new procedures, thrombectomy and nurses at the National Hospital and also in health care centres throughout Iceland; the university community; health authorities outside the countryside and the government; employees of the welfare department; the Health Minister of Iceland, to raise awareness of stroke trauma.
The Minister of Health, Svandís Svavarsdóttir, delivers a financial contribution to Þórir (Thorir) Steingrímsson, chairman of HEILAHEILL.
HEILAHEILL is a non-profit organisation for people interested in cerebrovascular disease and has been member of SAFE since 2011.
The population of Iceland is only 345 thousand and about 0.10% are members of the association. Its activities cover the whole country and are based on raising awareness of stroke trauma and drawing the attention of the general public through the regular media; social media; our website (recently updated in purple); YouTube; publication of our magazine and leaflets, etc., and the use social media such as direct broadcasts of regular meetings on Facebook!
Meetings are attended by are well-known doctors, nurses, famous actors, singers, writers volunteers to increase public participation.
It is estimated that approximately 2 individuals suffer a stroke per day in Iceland. The association, in cooperation with the authorities and National Hospital and other health care institutions across the country, promotes healthcare responses in the “door-to-needle” campaign, now estimated to be approximately 40 minutes, improving from an estimated approximately 80 minutes last year! Our contribution is this special HEILAHEILL emergency line-app in smartphones, speeding up emergency services when someone has a stroke symptom, enabling the accurate location of the person through GPS location technology and getting information on who is asking for help, their age and gender and of course why the emergency call is needed. Today 1% of the population have already downloaded this app on their phone and the emergency staff states that 0.0051% of them have already used it!
Jon Barrick, president of SAFE, together with Kolbrún Stefánsdóttir, board member of SAFE and board member of HEILAHEILL and Þórir Steingrímsson, chairman of HEILAHEILL, at SAFE conference in Madrid in June 2018.
Iceland has the potential to be tight-knit, very tight-knit, because everyone knows more about each other than in other European countries.
The people are like a big, helpful family, who stand together, without discrimination on the grounds of national differences or nationality, gender or social status, ethnicity, colour or religion.
Stroke survivors find it easy to fight for their affairs within the current legislation and dare to meet the politicians who make significant decisions about the stroke. This small community is unique, surrounded by clean and untouched nature.
Because of our present position in this favorable environment, we know that we have every chance of doing better for stroke patients, ensuring prevention, treatment and rehabilitation. And we will do so!
You can try this Icelandic app by downloading it from your appsutilities, Applestore, Googleplay, Playstore, and more and look for HEILAHEILL and use the ID number of the company 6112942209 – but the emergency staff will not attend you unless you are in Iceland!
Jun 11, 2018
First appeared on ScienceDaily.com
Stroke is the most common cause of adult disability. This is due not only to the high incidence of stroke, but also because spontaneous recovery is often incomplete and no drugs are available that hasten recovery.
Mesencephalic astrocyte-derived neurotrophic factor MANF is neuroprotective when administered before experimental stroke in rats.
A massive immune response mediated by activated microglia and macrophages occurs in the rat brain tissue after stroke. MANF has also recently been shown to recruit immune cells to the eye after retinal damage and to mediate retinal repair after photoreceptor transplantation.
Dr. Mikko Airavaara and his group at the University of Helsinki, Institute of Biotechnology administered MANF to rats after the ischemic brain injury, either by injecting recombinant MANF protein or by delivering a MANF-expressing viral vector into the brain area adjacent to the lesion.
When MANF was administered directly into brain tissue 2 to 3 days after stroke, it did not affect lesion volume but promoted reversal of stroke-induced behavioural impairments. “This indicated that MANF had an effect on the recovery of brain tissue function after injury,” says Dr. Kert Mätlik, the lead author of the study.
MANF treatment transiently increased the number of phagocytic macrophages close to the ischemic lesion. These cells are the professional cleaning crew that clears dying cells and dead material from injured tissue. “This really got me wondering if some of the inflammation is beneficial. What if facilitating specific branches of the inflammatory response enhances both tissue repair and functional recovery?” asks Mikko Airavaara.
By virtue of the presence of a skilled neurosurgeon, Dr. Kuan-Yin Tseng in the lab and a collaboration with Dr. Maria Lindahl, the researchers were also able to study the outcome of experimental stroke in mice that lack MANF in their brain cells. These additional experiments revealed the neuroprotective effect of endogenously-produced MANF against ischemic injury.
Mikko Airavaara has found the results very encouraging for pursuing the ultimate goal of combating long-term disability in stroke patients: “All in all this is a proof-of-concept study that shows the beneficial effect of MANF treatment on the reversal of stroke-induced behavioural deficits. It suggests that MANF or therapeutic agents with similar activity could be developed to repair brain tissue after stroke. However, much more work is needed before clinical studies can be considered.”
Story Source: University of Helsinki. “Post-stroke delivery of neurotrophic factor MANF promotes functional recovery in rats.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 11 June 2018. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/06/180611133731.htm>.
Jun 8, 2018
The first SAFE Regional Conference this year gathered 20 participants from organisations covering Spain, Catalonia, Norway, Finland, Portugal, Greece, Iceland, Turkey, Israel and Latvia.
The agenda was focused on SAFE’s activities in 2017 and 2018, with a special emphasis on current SAFE projects, such as the Stroke Action Plan for Europe 2018-2030, SAFE Angels Initiative, Life with Spasticity and the new upcoming project for raising awareness on stroke risk factors, Stop Stroke from Happening.
Jon Barrick, SAFE President gave an interesting overview of SAFE political activities aimed towards politicians and EU policy makers, shortly reflecting the Burden of Stroke Report presented in 2017 and how it led to the Stroke Action Plan document, in cooperation with ESO. The full document of the Stroke Action Plan for Europe 2018-2030 is expected to be released for public by September this year.
A special session of the meeting were dedicated to the World Stroke Campaign 2018 and it’s topic, Life After Stroke, as it is closely tied to SAFE’s core goals, such as improving life conditions and level of care for people who survived stroke and their families.
SAFE Project and Operations Manager, Victoria Brewer, gave an update on SSOFT project and helped participants perform a user testing of the existing SSOFT Modules 1 and 2.
Harriklia Proios, SAFE Board member from Greece, presented and update on EU funded research projects in which SAFE is involved as a member of consortium. Once again, the importance of research dissemination was stressed out, explaining why SAFE members should continue to take active part in dissemination activities.
SAFE Board member from Israel, Pnina Rosenzveig chaired a session with individual SSO’s feedback on national activities and next steps.
Finally, SAFE had a guest workshop held by our sponsorship partner Boehringer Ingelheim. The workshop was about the next steps in the Angels Initiative project development, with a special focus on new and exciting branding ideas and approaches for a sustainable stroke awareness education of the target audience.
SAFE is appreciating support from the company Boehringer Ingelheim, given to us through an unconditional educational grant. The Boehringer Ingelheim is a sponsor of all this year’s Regional Conferences, the one just being held in Madrid, but also the upcoming two in Dublin (21st June) and Prague (28th June 2018).
Jun 8, 2018
First appeared on ScienceDaily.com
More than 2.5 million Americans are living with Atrial Fibrillation (AFib). AFib is an irregular heartbeat that can lead to blood clots, stroke, heart failure and other heart-related complications.
What doctors and researchers currently understand about treating AFib stems mainly from whether a patient has been diagnosed with the condition or not. University of Minnesota researchers are urging the medical community to take a closer look, specifically at AFib burden.
AFib burden refers to the amount of AFib that an individual has. The goal of the scientific statement published in the American Heart Association’s journal Circulation is to increase knowledge and awareness by healthcare professionals of effective, state-of-the-art science related to the causes, prevention, detection, management, and future research needs related to AFib burden.
“We hope to bring awareness to this concept of measuring the AFib burden and then to outline what we know about it,” said Lin Yee Chen, MD, MS, tenured associate professor, Department of Medicine at the University of Minnesota Medical School, “the hope then is to use that knowledge so more research can be done to fill in those gaps.”
AFib is associated with an elevated risk of stroke, and this statement also pushes for more research to refine risk classifications for stroke. Further understanding the relationship between AFib pattern or burden and stroke risk might result in deeper insights into stroke prevention.
“We could see an enormous benefit to our patient population once these standards are applied. And now is the time to do so,” said Chen.
Story Source: University of Minnesota Medical School. “A deeper understanding of AFib could lower risk.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 6 June 2018. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/06/180606143719.htm>.
