As published in UConn Today – August 19, 2020

Many people who suffer a stroke are permanently disabled. Stroke remains the leading cause of long-term disability in the United States. Paralysis of one side of the body, speech and language problems, vision problems and memory loss are some of the major consequences of stroke injury.

Every year, nearly 800,000 people in the United States have a stroke. Even with recent advances in treatments to reduce damage and enhance recovery after stroke, solutions are significantly lacking.

Recently, UConn School of Medicine researchers published a paper in Experimental Neurology showing how they successfully inhibited an important receptor implicated in post-stroke damage and recovery.

The researchers specifically looked at ischemic stroke, which comprises 87% of strokes. Ischemic stroke occurs when there is a blockage in an artery leading to the brain. This reduces the amount of blood and oxygen getting to the brain, causing damage or death of brain cells.

Read more about this new stroke mechanism that Dr. Rajkumar Verma and his team found.