X-Message-Number: 9368
Date: Sun, 29 Mar 1998 17:16:32 -0800
From: "Joseph J. Strout" <>
Subject: Re: Lithium and Cerebral Ischemia

In message 9362, Steven B. Harris writes:

>It's been suggested that lithium might help in cerebral ischemia, and
>it's a good thought for various reasons.  However, in the one clear
>experiment where it's been tried as a cerebroprotectant, it didn't
>work...
>
>Stroke 1991 Jan;22(1):84-89
>	...
> In three
>treated groups of 10 gerbils each, 5 meq/kg i.p. lithium chloride was
>given 2 days, 1 day, and 2 hours before ischemia; 2 hours before
>ischemia; or immediately after the end of ischemia.

Thanks for the reference!  But I note that in this study, the longest
treatment time was 2 days.  One of the hallmarks of lithium therapy for
mental disorders is that it takes about a week to produce any benefit.  The
recent study in cultured neurons also found that it took a week's treatment
to get the measured effect.  So this study may do nothing more than prove
what we already knew: lithium doesn't have much effect in the first couple
of days.

It would be very interesting to see a very similar study, but where lithium
was administered for a week or more before ischemia.

,------------------------------------------------------------------.
|    Joseph J. Strout           Department of Neuroscience, UCSD   |
|               http://www-acs.ucsd.edu/~jstrout/  |
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