But researchers at the University of South Carolina want to reverse the long-term effects the disease has on some patients who have trouble communicating with others.
USC Professor Julius Fridriksson is taking on the challenge with the aid of an $11 million, five-year grant for stroke recovery research awarded by the National Institute of Health.
USC Professor Julius Fridriksson was awarded an $11 million grant to study aphasia and stroke recovery. Blood flow and brain activity related to stroke can be seen in the scans.
Stroke patients also will be able to undergo various speech, writing and behavioral therapies at the university’s rehabilitation centers to discover the best course of treatment for their aphasia.
The NIH grant will focus on four areas:
Measure the effects of treatment on chronic patients to see who responds well or poorly to therapy.
Assess those who have just had a stroke and use aphasia therapy and electrical brain stimulation to find the best ways to enhance patient outcomes in the days and weeks immediately following a stroke.
Study the brain and nervous system, as well as their effects on a person’s cognition and behavior, to build a statistical model of who is most likely to recover from aphasia and who is not.
Compare the influence of the brain and the nervous system on speech and language in normal people versus those recovering from stroke.
Undergraduate and graduate students from USC’s public health, psychology and exercise science departments will be able to participate in the study, Fridriksson said. Souvik Sen, professor and chairman of the Department of Neurology at USC’s medical school and medical director for the Palmetto Health Stroke Center.
“Palmetto Health is crucial because they get so many stroke patients,” Fridriksson said. That year, stroke caused more than 14,500 hospitalizations and more than 2,300 deaths sin the state, according to the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control.
Fridriksson said poor diets, smoking and other bad habits could be some of the causes of the increasing number of younger stroke patients he sees, identifying most of those as being in their 30s and 40s.
“Stroke rate has actually gone down a little bit amongst the older population,” he said, “but we have a very distinct moniker in South Carolina that half of all stroke patients here are under 60.”
Fridriksson’s study on stroke and aphasia will begin April 1. Souvik Sen, Johns Hopkins University, Julius Fridrikkson, McCausland Center for Brain Imaging, Medical University of South Carolina, National Institutes of Health, Palmetto Health Hospital, Palmetto Health Stroke Center, stroke, stroke recovery, the University of California Irvine, University of South Carolina
