I actually had the mother of someone I know die of a hemorraghic stroke, as a complication of T.P.A. in the ED where I worked. I wonder if this new therapy could have reversed that?

Most of the 700,000 strokes in the United States each year are caused by a clot that cuts off the flow of blood to the brain. Over the past decade, the clot-busting drug T.P.A., or tissue plasminogen activator, has been effective in treating many of them.There has been no effective treatment for the 10 percent to 15 percent of strokes caused by bleeding in the brain.

More than half the victims die within a year, and only one in five recover well enough to regain mobility.

In an international study, the researchers said, stroke victims given the drug - recombinant activated factor VIIa, a clot-forming drug sold as NovoSeven - were one-third less likely to die and three times as likely to survive without severe disability.

The study was conducted at 73 hospitals in 20 countries. Researchers assigned 399 patients to get the drug or a placebo. Patients who took the drug within four hours of the onset of a stroke had about half the amount of bleeding in their brain.

After three months, 18 percent of those who took the drug had died, compared with 29 percent of those in the other group.

The drug had side effects. Seven percent of patients who received it suffered heart attacks or strokes caused by blood clots, compared with 2 percent of those in the other group. But most recovered.

Source: [1] New York Times

Then again, who paid for the study? The pharmaceutical firm, who intends to market the drug and derive a profit from it, of course….