Online Journal Club for January 2009

Our new format includes only relevant articles. If you have articles that you believe should be included in the online journal club, send them to me before the 20th of the month. Not much this month because of the holiday’s and revamping the jclub format; next month's journal club will be more substantial.

From JCBFM 0109:

*1. The role of animal models in evaluating reasonable safety and efficacy for human trials of cell-based interventions for neurologic conditions. Alan Regenberg et al.

A position paper from Traystman and about 325 other authors. The section on general problems of predictive validity of animal models is worth checking out, as is the discussion on the state of the science of stem-cell therapy for neurological conditions. The "LEssons from Acute Ischemic Stroke Research" is a pretty incisive indictment of our entire field.

Link (PDF): http://www.nature.com/jcbfm/journal/v29/n1/pdf/jcbfm200898a.pdf

*2. The neuroprotective effect of prostaglandin E2 EP1 receptor inhibition has a wide therapeutic window, is sustained in time and is not sexually dimorphic. Takato Abe, et al.

A unisex neuroprotectant! Works in girls AND boys! This paper is primarily of interest for its methods. They're using an 80% reduction in LDF through the parietal bone as their threshold, which seems pretty rigorous. Their method of infarct volume measurement was--get this!--CRESYL VIOLET. Stroke volumes were reported graphically-numerically; the authors didn't include any of those cute little photomontages which seem to be _de rigeur_ for focal ischemia studies. Interesting. Also, I note that they removed the Lin correction for edema after 14 days, which is something that we need to think about. No MRI data.