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Curcumin and Stroke By Dr Ailsa McGregor Curcumin, a compound found within the very popular cooking spice, turmeric, is a natural polyphenol that has been used for centuries inAyurvedic and Chinese Traditional Medicine to help manage inflammation. Dr Ailsa McGregor, a Senior Lecturer in clinical pharmacology at the University of Otago, is investigating using curcumin on stroke patients who are not suitable for clot buster therapy but have inflammation in the brain. She mentions, “over the last 10 years, curcumin has transitioned from alternative to mainstream medicine and has been investigated as a potential therapy for cancer and other disorders with an inflammatory component, including diabetes and wound healing.” Dr McGregor continues to explain that, “administering curcumin before or immediately after stroke produces both anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective effects in experimental models, but it’s unclear whether this salvage of brain tissue translates to improvements in function and whether curcumins have a wider application as regenerative agents.” Dr McGregor discusses her research in full below, and how curcumin could be used in the future in reducing inflammation post-stroke to promote functional recovery. This research wouldn’t be possible without the generous support by the estate of Trevor Small. What is your research about? Dr Ailsa McGregor: This project will investigate whether delayed administration of a series of new and highly potent curcumin analogues can reduce brain inflammation and improve stroke-related neurological deficits in an experimental stroke model. In clinical terms, this work will provide supporting evidence for the development of a pharmacological therapy which could be easily translated to the clinical setting. Designed to be administered in the days after stroke, this approach has implications for surviving stroke patients who arrive late to hospital and are not suitable for clot buster (thrombolytic) therapy. What has led you to this? Dr Ailsa McGregor: Brain injuries like stroke are associated with profound activation of inflammatory pathways. While inflammation is important in resolving injury, prolonged inflammation hampers repair and correlates with poor outcomes in stroke patients.We recently showed that reducing brain inflammation in the days after stroke upregulated markers of tissue repair and increased functional recovery in a clinically relevant mouse model of stroke. These results support our idea that counteracting this later phase of inflammation may be a more effective treatment approach. Dr Ailsa MacGregor and her postdoctorate fellow Dr Joseph Kim. 16 / Headlines