Transferability of Animal Results To Human Stroke
Although multiple therapies have proven to be effective in animals, only very few have done so in human patients. Reasons for this are (Dirnagl 1999):
- Side effects: Many highly potent neuroprotective drugs display side effects which inhibit the application of effective doses in patients (e.g. MK-801)
- Delay: Whereas in animal studies the time of incidence onset is known and therapy can be started early, patients often present with delay and unclear time of symptom onset
- “Age and associated illnesses: Most experimental studies are conducted on healthy, young animals under rigorously controlled laboratory conditions. However, the typical stroke patient is elderly with numerous risk factors and complicating diseases (for example, diabetes, hypertension and heart diseases)” (Dirnagl 1999)
- Morphological and functional differences between the brain of humans and animals: Although the basic mechanisms of stroke are identical between humans and other mammals, there are differences.
- Evaluation of efficacy: In animals, treatment effects are mostly measured as a reduction of lesion volume, whereas in human studies functional evaluation (which reflects the severity of disabilities) is commonly used. Thus, therapies might reduce the size of the cerebral lesion (found in animals), but not the functional impairment when tested in patients.
Read more about this topic: Animal Models Of Stroke
Famous quotes containing the words animal, results, human and/or stroke:
“The boxer’s ring is the enjoyment of the part of society whose animal nature alone has been developed.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Nothing is as difficult as to achieve results in this world if one is filled full of great tolerance and the milk of human kindness. The person who achieves must generally be a one-ideaed individual, concentrated entirely on that one idea, and ruthless in his aspect toward other men and other ideas.”
—Corinne Roosevelt Robinson (1861–1933)
“Emancipation should make it possible for woman to be human in the truest sense. Everything within her that craves assertion and activity should reach its fullest expression; all artificial barriers should be broken, and the road towards greater freedom cleared of every trace of centuries of submission and slavery.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“Every new stroke of civilization has cost the lives of countless brave men, who have fallen defeated by the “dragon,” in their efforts to win the apples of the Hesperides, or the fleece of gold. Fallen in their efforts to overcome the old, half sordid savagery of the lower stages of creation, and win the next stage.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)