Aggressively lowering blood pressure in the early hours of a bleeding stroke can limit its severity, a preliminary study found, giving hope of a major advance for treating this often-fatal problem.
These strokes happen when a vessel in the head bursts or leaks, flooding brain tissue with blood and damaging areas that control walking, talking and other functions. More than 100,000 occur each year in the United States - a million worldwide -and half prove fatal.
"It is a major public health problem," said Dr. Philip Gorelick, neurology chief at the University of Illinois in Chicago and chairman of the International Stroke Conference, where the new study was reported on Friday
Doctors know that high blood pressure raises the risk of these strokes, but it isn't known if it's safe to rapidly lower it right after one occurs.
The study tested this in 404 stroke patients in Asia and Australia. Half were given usual care -intravenous drugs to lower systolic blood pressure (the big number, or top reading) to 180; the rest had their blood pressure lowered to 140. Normal is 120.
Additional bleeding was about one-third less in the more aggressively treated patients, and the treatment proved safe with no major side effects, said Dr. Craig Anderson of the University of Sydney in Australia, who led the research.
The finding needs to be confirmed in a larger study, but emergency doctors "will probably grab on it," said Dr. Larry Goldstein, director of Duke University Medical Center's stroke center.
The Australian government's health agency paid for the study and will fund one with 2,500 patients starting later this year.
