Buchet
30 mars 2025
No fewer than 150,000 per year, one every four minutes, the third leading cause of death in France, and 60% of patients who will suffer neurological after-effects—these are the alarming figures surrounding strokes. Much research is underway to identify treatments that could protect the brain from damage caused by a stroke. Among them, uric acid appears to be a promising candidate
Past failures in translating stroke cerebroprotection provoked calls for a more rigorous methodological approach, leading to the stroke preclinical assessment network SPAN (Stroke Preclinical Assessment Network), where uric acid (UA) treatment exceeded a prespecified efficacy boundary for the primary functional outcome. Still, successful translation to humans requires confirmation of the effect of UA across key biological variables relevant to patients with stroke.
The SPAN program and the selection of the most promising therapies in the treatment of stroke
The study is part of the Stroke Preclinical Assessment Network (SPAN), an adaptive methodology that allows for the parallel assessment of several therapies and quickly discard those whose effectiveness is insufficient.
In this program, six experimental treatments were tested, according to protocols rigorous: randomization, blind analysis and use of animal models representative of stroke patients.
The effectiveness of each treatment was assessed through a series of behavioral tests, as well as by analysis of the volume brain lesions by MRI . An innovative statistical method was applied to analyze the data at four stages of the testing process.
Of the six therapies evaluated, only uric acid demonstrated consistent efficacy throughout the protocol. The other interventions, including four drugs already approved for other pathologies and a remote ischemic conditioning technique, were ruled out after interim analyses.
These results suggest that uric acid may be an effective adjunctive treatment to improve recovery after acute ischemic stroke . However, further studies in animal models will be needed before considering clinical trials on Man.
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/STROKEAHA.124.048748