Magnesium 'does not improve stroke patient recovery'

Treating patients with magnesium within an hour of stroke symptoms presenting does not improve a patient's outcome, according to a new study. New research - which is the first of its kind - has found that a patient's recovery following a stroke is not improved by early administration of magnesium.

A consortium, led by University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), conducted an eight-year study, the results of which were presented at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference today (February 14th). Working with paramedics in the field, researchers found that magnesium is not an effective treatment within the golden hour - the first hour in which symptoms present and that affects the overall outcome of a patient following a stroke - when it comes to improving a patient's recovery.

However, they found that intravenous medicines can be administered within this window, which could offer the best chance of survival and avoidance of lasting neurological damage. This means that paramedics could very well provide more effective medications within the first hour of symptoms of stroke developing and therefore drastically improve patient outcomes.

Dr Jeffrey Saver, director of the UCLA Stroke Center and professor of neurology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, said: "Stroke is a true emergency condition. For every minute that goes by without restoration of blood flow, two million nerve cells are lost. Since time lost is brain lost, we wanted to develop a method that let us get potentially brain-saving drugs to the patient in the earliest moments of onset of the stroke. If these patients don't get protective drugs until two, three or four hours later, irreversible brain damage has already occurred."

Although it was found that delivering magnesium to patients showing signs of stroke does not improve outcomes, new drugs are now being tested that could help reduce long-term outcomes and be administered quickly. This could drastically improve patients' chances of recovery following a stroke.