ANIMAL TESTS SHOW METH MAY OFFER RELIEF TO STROKE VICTIMS

Stroke victims might one day receive relief from a startling source:
methamphetamine.

The addictive drug that ruins lives in horrible ways actually
protected neurons when injected after strokes into the brains of rats
and gerbils in a Missoula laboratory. "I didn't believe it at
first," Dave Poulsen said Friday. "We thought that, based on the
literature, it was going to make the effect of stroke worse. We were
kind of surprised."

Poulsen, a University of Montana research assistant professor, will
be in Atlanta on Wednesday to present the findings of a team of
researchers from UM, St. Patrick Hospital and Montana State
University at the Society for Neuroscience's annual conference.

Poulsen cautioned that testing is far from complete. Meth won't be a
panacea for stroke sufferers any time soon.

"It's very important that everybody understands that," he said.

He also knows the findings will raise eyebrows when they hit the press.

"I'm scared," Poulsen said frankly. "On the one hand, there's
probably a group that wants everybody to understand that meth is
really bad stuff, and it is. Any drug when it's abused is bad stuff.
But the reality is everything is toxic depending on its levels of use."

A year ago, Poulsen was helping other researchers study the effect of
meth on the lungs when the unexpected trend arose.

It's been shown that the drug makes brain damage worse when
administered before a stroke. But it seems the opposite is true when
infused afterward.

Poulsen's team first tested rat hippocampus, the part of the brain
used for memory and learning. Thin slices were kept in cultures for
nine days, then deprived of oxygen and glucose for 90 minutes to
mimic stroke conditions.

A special red dye was used to reveal the damage to neurons, cells
that serve as the primary functional units of the brain and nervous
system. There are an estimated 100 billion neu

Time and again, neuronal damage proved to be less in the stroke
slices than the non-stroke slices.

"Don't ask me how. We are trying to figure that out," Poulsen said.
"But methamphetamine is clearly protective."

The dosage is critical. A small amount of meth works. Higher doses
increase the damage.

The scientists also found that low doses were effective for up to 16
hours after a stroke.

"This is significant, since the current leading clot-busting drug
used for strokes - tissue plasminogen activator - must be
administered within three hours," he said.

In cooperation with Michael Babcock of Montana State University, the
Missoula researchers then tested live gerbils in what Poulsen
described as "a quick pilot study."

Untreated gerbils that had strokes became twice as active and
agitated as normal in the ensuing 24 to 48 hours. But those that
received a low dose of meth were calmer.

When, after three weeks, the brains of the gerbils were dissected,
the neurons of those treated with meth were as intact as the
non-stroke animals. The ones that weren't treated showed profound
neuronal loss.

The difference, said Poulsen, was "stark."

Poulsen's team presented an abstract of their findings to the Society
of Neuroscience in May, one of some 14,000 submitted. It was among
700 that the society chose to "put into a news release package."

Hence the news release this week from UM, just before the Atlanta
convention starts Saturday.

"We hate to put this stuff out before we have it published," Poulsen
said. "We're trying to finish up some experiments and get things
nailed down to publish. But I figured it was going to get released
(next week) anyway."

The next step, Poulsen said, is to "go back and look at very rigorous
rat models" to see if the meth treatment affects the flow of oxygen
and glucose typically lost in a stroke.

The scientists will seek grants from the National Institute of
Neurological Disorders and Stroke to continue the studies.