Speed may protect the brain against stroke damage

First the article about marijuana protecting against Alzheimers, and how this...

13 October 2006 - New Scientist:

"Researchers induced strokes in gerbils, causing them to become twice as active and agitated as normal gerbils. But when the animals were given a low dose of methamphetamine up to 16 hours after the event, the animals became calmer. Dissection later showed that the neurons of the gerbils given methamphetamine were as intact as in animals that had not suffered stroke.

“Methamphetamine is a drug that has been shown to exacerbate stroke damage when administered before a stroke, but we have seen roughly 80% to 90% protection of neurons when administered after a stroke,” says Dave Poulsen, who led the research at the University of Montana in the US.
Simulated stroke

The team also looked at slices of rat brain taken from the hippocampus – a region involved in memory and learning – which they kept in a nutritious culture for nine days. The slices were then deprived of glucose and oxygen for 90 minutes to mimic the conditions of a stroke.

A low dose of methamphetamine was added to some of the brain slices, and had a protective effect. There was less neuronal damage in the slices that received the drug compared to those that did not, the researchers say.

Poulsen confesses he has no idea why the drug has this effect, although he repeated the gerbil experiment four times and “it worked again and again”."