Combining tPA with the leukaemia drug imatinib can reduce the risk of bleeding in the brain when treating stroke patients, a new study has found.

Researchers from the Stockholm Branch of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research (LICR) and the University of Michigan Medical School demonstrated that imatinib reduces the risk of bleeding associated with the stroke medication tPA when tested on mice.

Use of tPA to treat stroke patients is known to have limited safety and must be administered within three hours of initial presentation of symptoms. The results found that when combined with imatinib, bleeding was reduced even five hours after the onset of stroke.

According to the World Health Organization, 80 per cent of the 15 million strokes which occur annually are caused by the type of blood clots in the brain that tPA has the ability to dissolve.

Professor Ulf Eriksson, lead researcher of the LICR team, commented: "This finding has indeed the potential to revolutionise the treatment of strokes."

Acting on the results, the LICR researchers and the Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm are teaming up to co-ordinate a clinical trial involving the use of imatinib in the treatment of stroke patients.

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