Gordie Howe recovering from stroke after stem-cell transplant

This is absolutely AMAZING.  Wish this would have been around 30+ years ago when my dad suffered a stroke.
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Gordie Howe is making a remarkable recovery from a stroke that nearly led to him being placed in hospice care last fall.

The hockey great has gained 20 pounds and is “doing fantastic” after undergoing stem-cell treatment in Mexico in early December, one of his sons told NHL Live. Howe continues to recover at the Lubbock, Texas, home of his daughter.

“He’s doing very, very well,” said Dr. Murray Howe, director of sports medicine imaging of Toledo Hospital. “He has good days and bad days like anybody who’s 86, but overall he’s heading in the right direction really every day, a little bit better. He had his stem cell treatment Dec. 8 and really since that time he’s just been doing fantastic.

“He loves to be busy. If you want to torture him just make him sit down and watch television. He is just about doing stuff. He’s in great spirits. He has an excellent quality of life. He’s doing all the things that he wants to do now other than fishing, only because we haven’t taken him fishing since his treatment, but he’s looking forward to doing that.”

Howe was unable to stand, walk or feed himself after suffering the stroke in late October. “He was losing weight because he wasn’t able to sustain himself in terms of eating,” his son said. “He essentially got to the point where he was bedridden and it was just no quality of life there.”

Although it was feared that he had suffered another stroke in early December, he was suffering from dehydration, but his family was told to consider hospice care. At around the same time, a San Diego biopharmaceutical company reached out to offer treatment at no charge. According to Howe’s son, the results were instant. From NHL.com’s Jon Lane:

Gordie Howe had the treatment Dec. 8 in Tijuana at a Mexican stem cell company called Novastem that’s licensed the use of Stemedica’s cells for clinical trials approved by the Mexican government. Neural stem cells were injected into the spinal canal on Day 1 and mesenchymal stem cells by intravenous infusion on Day 2, according to a release sent by the Howe family in mid-December.

“They said that we might see some changes in my father within 24 hours and I just didn’t believe it,” Dr. Howe said.

Eight hours later, Gordie Howe began talking. He then demanded to walk to the bathroom.

“I said ‘I’ll get the urinal because you can’t walk’ and he says, ‘Well the [heck] I can’t walk,’” Dr. Howe said. “We actually sat up and put his feet down on the side of bed and I was absolutely stunned. I’d never seen anything like it in 28 years of doing medicine.”

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Agent Orange Exposure Linked to Stroke

Stroke has been added to the growing list of possible health effects Vietnam veterans may face long term after exposure to Agent Orange.

In response to new evidence showing a statistically significant overall increase in stroke associated with exposure to chemical in Agent Orange, a committee examining these health effects has moved stroke to the "limited and suggestive" evidence category.

However, the published data do not permit distinguishing hemorrhagic from ischemic stroke, said the authors of the updated report, Veterans and Agent Orange: Update 2012 : Committee to Review the Health Effects in Vietnam Veterans of Exposure to Herbicides (Ninth Biennial Update).

The evidence already suggested an association between exposure to the chemicals and hypertension, ischemic heart disease, and type 2 diabetes, as well as Parkinson's disease and some cancers.

Elsewhere in the 900-page report, the committee concluded that on the basis of newly reviewed evidence and in previous reports, there is also "limited or suggestive" evidence of an association between exposure to the chemicals of interest and Parkinson's disease.

The committee concluded that on the basis of new evidence and previous reports, evidence is inadequate or insufficient to determine whether there is an association between exposure to chemicals of interest and Alzheimer's disease.

Herbicide Mixtures

The current document was produced by a committee chaired by Mary K. Walker, professor, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. It presents the committee's review of peer-reviewed scientific reports concerning associations between health outcomes and exposure to chemicals in herbicides used in Vietnam that were published from October 2010 to September 2012 and the integration of this new information into the existing database.

From 1962 to 1971, the US military sprayed herbicides over Vietnam to strip the thick jungle canopy that could conceal opposition forces, to destroy crops that those forces might depend on, and to clear tall grasses and bushes from the perimeters of US base camps and outlying fire-support bases.

The herbicide mixtures used were named according to the colors of identification bands painted on the storage drugs. The main chemical sprayed was Agent Orange, a 50-50 mixture of 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) and 2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4,5-T).

Because of continuing complaints and uncertainty about long-term health effects of sprayed herbicides in Vietnam vets, Congress passed the Agent Orange Act of 1991, which directed the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to ask the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to comprehensively evaluate scientific and medical information on the health effects of exposure to Agent Orange and other herbicides used in Vietnam. The legislation also instructed the Secretary to ask the NAS to conduct updates every 2 years for 10 years to draw conclusions from newly available literature.

In response to the first request, the Institute of Medicine convened a committee whose conclusions were published in 1994. The work of later committees resulted in the publication of biennial updates and of focused reports on the scientific evidence regarding type 2 diabetes, acute myeloid leukemia in children, and the latent period for respiratory cancer.

The Veterans Education and Benefits Expansion Act of 2001 mandated that the biennial updates continue through 2014.

In this most recent update, one of the studies the committee looked at was the Prospective Investigation of Vasculature in Uppsala Seniors, a small study (n = 35) that examined the relationship among several chemicals that have dioxin-like activity and stroke incidence.

Contrasting high and low quartiles, the study found a strong (relative risk, 3.8) and statistically significant albeit imprecise (95% confidence interval, 1.2 - 12.2) relationship between exposure and stroke after adjustment for relevant potentially confounding factors. A statistically significant dose-response relationship was also seen across exposure quartiles.

Prior literature shows an overall increase in stroke and cerebrovascular disease associated with exposure to chemicals of interest in environmental, occupational, and Vietnam veteran populations. Human and animal studies have demonstrated biological plausibility of the connection between exposure to chemicals of interest and stroke, which is strongly linked to hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes, conditions already in the limited and suggestive evidence category.

After weighing all these factors, the committee voted to move stroke to the limited and suggestive category.

The published data did not permit the committee to distinguish hemorrhagic from ischemic stroke, but given that only a small percentage of strokes are the hemorrhagic type in the Western population, this was not seen as an impediment, according to the report.

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/817541 

Stroke Victims Recovering After Stem Cell Therapy

Five stroke victims have shown signs of recovery following pioneering stem cell therapy.

Stem cells were injected directly into damaged areas of stroke victims’ brains in a trial at a Glasgow hospital.

The initial results, being presented at the European stroke conference in London tomorrow, show brain function has improved for five of the nine subjects.

Scientists say this shows the pioneering treatment may ‘kick-start’ the body’s repair process or even turn into the relevant tissue.

Professor Keith Muir said: ‘We remain pleased and encouraged by the data.’

Stroke is the third largest cause of death and the single largest cause of adult disability in the developed world.

Dr Clare Walton, a neuroscientist at the Stroke Association, said: ‘When a stroke strikes, the brain is starved of oxygen and, as a result, brain cells in the affected area die.

‘The use of stem cells is a promising technique which could help to reverse some of the disabling effects of stroke.

JUMP