Oleanolic acid: a promising neuroprotective agent for cerebral ischemia

CALTANA LAURA; NIETO MARIA; BRUSCO ALICIA

NEURAL REGENERATION RESEARCH

SHENYANG EDITORIAL DEPT NEURAL REGENERATION RES

Año: 2015 vol. 10 p. 540 - 541

1673-5374

Stroke is considered the most common and severely disabling neurological disease. It is one of the leading causes of death after heart disease and cancer, causing 10% deaths worldwide and involving risk factors such as smoking, obesity and nutritional disbalance. Disability affects 75% of stroke survivors through severe mental and/or physical impairment depending on the affected brain area (Go et al., 2014). Stroke treatment is limited to thrombolysis and antiplatelet therapy with a tissue plasminogen activator (tPA), which is only useful if administered within 3 hours of the appearance of early symptoms. This therapy is only used in 1?2% stroke patients and has, indeed, limited clinical success, as it does not protect neurons from the hypoxic insult. Therefore, the development and evaluation of new drugs to reduce the life-threatening effects of stroke and hypoxia might prove extremely fruitful.