Everyday Compounds Prevent Stroke Injury; MacGyver Jealous

UCSF is reporting on two new studies that have found common compounds to dramatically reduce brain damage in strokes.
The first study, appearing in Frontiers in Bioscience, discovered that NAD+, a reducing compound that is found in every cell in the body (remember glycolysis and the Kreb’s Cycle?) can do wonders when shot up your nose while your brain is low on blood-flow:

In one study, rats’ brains were subjected to ischemia — severely reduced blood flow — for two hours in a model of stroke. Researchers then administered nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, or NAD+, immediately after “reperfusion,” or resumption of blood flow. Reperfusion is the time when stroke damage actually occurs because brain cells are suddenly exposed to highly reactive and unstable oxygen molecules, which are toxic.
The researchers found that NAD+ reduced brain cell death from reperfusion by 70 to 86 percent compared with rats not given the treatment, according to lead author Weihei Ying, PhD, a research scientist at SFVAMC and an assistant adjunct professor of neurology at the University of California, San Francisco.

The second study was similar, but used a green tea extract instead of NAD+. The study had similar results:

A second study led by Ying investigated whether administration of the green tea extract gallotannin, or GT, can protect against post-ischemic brain damage. In previous cell culture studies by Ying and other researchers, GT had been shown to inhibit the action of PARG, an enzyme closely related to PARP-1, and in doing so decrease cell death under ischemia-like conditions. Ying’s study indicates that it does the same in rats, reducing brain cell death significantly when administered intranasally up to three hours after reperfusion.

In addition, the second study found that intranasal administration had a far superior effect to IV administration.
We don’t think they recommend doing lines of green tea if you suspect you’re having a stroke, but it’s an interesting image nonetheless.
You can read the whole press release here…