Short Sighted Stroke Studies.

Excuse the alliteration in the title but it sums up my sentiments. I recently attended the American Heart Associations’ International Conference on Stroke and am sadly disappointed. The reason is because it seems that everything is geared to very short term immediate returns and little investment in the future.

Please note, I have the greatest respect for the American Heart Association, this post is not about them, but scientists in the stroke field.

Let me explain. I have been attending scientific conferences since the 1980s and over the years attended a lot of conferences in the heart, cardiovascular and cerebral vascular fields. With my personal and professional development I am now able to attend these conferences and see the trends that are cutting edge and will be the technology of the next ten years. This is important because medical research is a pipeline of new research technologies funneling into clinical trials all designed to eventually benefit patients. The reality is that for a discovery in a scientific lab to be a benefit to patients it takes 10 years.

Most of the time when I have been at conferences like the cardiology conferences I could see the drugs and technologies that were coming down the pipeline. At the stroke meeting either I missed the future technologies or they are not there. I admit I did not go to every session in the meeting, it is impossible to be in 4 talks at one time. So maybe I missed the hot topic that will save patients in ten years. But as far as I’m concerned all the new stroke research will be used up on 3 years. In my opinion this is because there is no new/innovative stroke research being done right now. Currently, clinical studies are borrowing drugs and technologies from other disciplines like the heart attack research. Did you ever wonder about the American Heart Association sponsoring the Stroke Conference? Stroke is like Cinderella but we still have yet to get to the ball. Moreover, the brain and heart are not interchangeable and this will cause problems.

Four or five years ago the National Institutes of Health’s Stroke Institute, NINDS, gave a presentation at the stroke meeting on how a series of initiatives would help channel pipeline technologies from discovery, to early clinical research to big clinical trials. This would be done in three steps and funded by the government without the biases that might occur from corporate sponsorship. Well guess what, that initiative was cancelled in 2008 and not supported by the stimulus package (ARRA) in 2009. Part of the initiative was started and that was the two clinical steps, but what was cancelled was the early drug and technology discovery step. What that means is the federal government is not supporting a pipeline of technologies for treating stroke patients. Discovery oriented scientists see this and are drifting away taking with them the future of stroke research.

That is just sad.

Note if you have not noticed, “that is just sad” is a mini mantra that I have been using for a segue to solving the problem being discussed. I’ll continue using it because my hope is that it will be a familiar platform in my blog.

In my opinion the solution is actually contrary to some things I have said before. Several of my proposed solutions have expressly not employed throwing money at a problem. But this is one case where money talks and money is the only language that will be heard. If the government and industry do not invest now into developing new diagnostics, new drugs, new scientists in the most fundamental research into stroke, we will have no medical future in stroke. Not only is more money needed for more research but a lot more money is needed because so much funding has been taken away recently. The poor showing at the “stroke” meeting reflects the poor future for stroke research. Some day very soon you or your loved one may have a stroke and be treated by someone who was trained in cardiology and or using heart drugs. That makes no sense because the heart and brain are not the same. Even the arteries in the heart and brain are drastically different. Stroke research, like Cinderella, needs to be invited to the ball.