Doctors are now happening upon ways to regenerate a brain compromised by stroke. Stop and think about that and perhaps read the opening sentence once again. This is quite the leap.
Broken bones can be healed, organs throughout the body can be operated on or enhanced with pharmaceutical advances, but it’s long been accepted wisdom that when parts of the brain are killed off, that’s it. There’s no fix. There’s only medical care, or put more bluntly, there’s doctor “demeanor” in place of advances that can actually improve what’s died a little or a lot.
How things have changed, or are possibly changing? Advances in medical science are making their way to the brain.
This is quite something in consideration of the long-believed truth that, in the words of New York Times reporter Rachel Gross, “the brain could not rewire.” Gross adds that “for decades, the medical attitude toward survivors of brain injury has largely been one of neurological ‘nihilism,’” whereby the injury could be diagnosed followed by, one supposes, demeanor. And human support to make up for what the brain can no longer do. Gross references neurology legend Santiago Ramon y Cajal (1852-1934) as concluding that with brains, “the nerve paths are something fixed, ended and immutable. Everything may die, nothing may be regenerated.”
The exciting news is that with the brain, the historically impossible just might be possible.
There are clinical trials underway right now for a pill that could make brain regeneration from stroke or serious head injury more of a reality. What perhaps makes the story more interesting is that Maraviroc initially gained FDA approval as an H.I.V. drug.
Enter Dr. S. Thomas Carmichael at the Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and who while still in medical school started work focused on whether the brain could revive itself. Gross reports that in 2019 Carmichael produced evidence that Maraviroc “boosted neuroplasticity after brain injury.”
Where does it go from here? While Carmichael conveyed to Gross that Maraviroc “is not a perfect drug,” it’s also true that Carmichael and other would-be pathbreakers are not solely invested in the success of just one drug. Instead, they believe Maraviroc and discoveries from same will produce crucial new knowledge that will hopefully expand the range of drugs and therapies associated with brain regeneration.
For now, what matters is that a medical line long seen as uncrossable has been crossed. In the words of Sean Dukelow, another physician interviewed by Gross, “we’re actually on the verge of guiding that rewiring” of the brain that was historically viewed as not rewirable.
All of which causes the medically illiterate (this includes the individual you’re reading) to wonder what’s ahead if a point is reached that the effects of stroke on the brain can be reversed. What about other head traumas, and what about ways to pair any advances with trauma endured on fields of play?
The answer to the above question can seemingly be found yet again in the century-old commentary of Santiago Ramon y Cajal. Carmichael cited to Gross a second part of Cajal’s statement about the immutability of brains: “It is for the science of the future to change, if possible, this harsh decree.” If the formerly impossible becomes possible, the frontier of medical and health advance will have been pushed much further out, and in ways that will make life and living a great deal better.
