Vampire Bats Might Aid Stroke Victims

Ginas writes "CNN is reporting the bite of a vampire bat may help stroke victims. According to the article a substance taken from bats' saliva contains a powerful clot buster and may be used up to three times longer than the current stroke treatment and without additional risk for brain damage side effects. Kind of makes you wonder how they stumbled on to this discovery."

Comments

Obvious dialogue

[Daniel Dvorkin]

"Doctor, I think I'm having a stroke!"

"Don't vorry ... ve can solf zis problem ... lie back, and tilt your head, like zo ... ah ..."

Okay, seriously. This is a really good thing. T-PA, as the article mentions, is a powerful lifesaving drug but is also really horrible stuff. IIRC from my ER days, we used to routinely push some other incredibly powerful drugs without a second thought -- e.g. levophed, aka "leave 'em dead," which keeps core blood pressure up in heart attack and massive trauma victims but can have the unpleasant side effect of reducing peripheral circulation to the point that you'll eventually have to have some limbs amputated -- but T-PA was about the only drug that we absolutely had to have a second opinion on. They didn't trust the ER docs to make the call; an internal medicine doc had to approve it. That's how vicious the stuff is. Anything that provides a major improvement will be welcome.