Kota Kurisu, Jong Youl Kim, Jesung You and Midori A. Yenari* Pages 5430 - 5455 ( 26 )
Therapeutic hypothermia has consistently been shown to be a robust neuroprotectant in many labs studying different models of neurological disease. Although this therapy has shown great promise, there are still challenges at the clinical level that limit the ability to apply this routinely to each pathological condition. In order to overcome issues involved in hypothermia therapy, understanding of this attractive therapy is needed. We review methodological concerns surrounding therapeutic hypothermia, introduce the current status of therapeutic cooling in various acute brain insults, and review the literature surrounding the many underlying molecular mechanisms of hypothermic neuroprotection. Because recent work has shown that body temperature can be safely lowered using pharmacological approaches, this method may be an especially attractive option for many clinical applications. Since hypothermia can affect multiple aspects of brain pathophysiology, therapeutic hypothermia could also be considered a neuroprotection model in basic research, which would be used to identify potential therapeutic targets. We discuss how research in this area carries the potential to improve outcome from various acute neurological disorders.
Hypothermia, pharmacology induced hypothermia, stroke, traumatic brain injury, cardiac arrest, hypoxic- ischemic encephalopathy.
Department of Neurology, University of California, San Francisco and Veterans Affairs Medical Center, San Francisco, California 94121, Department of Neurology, University of California, San Francisco and Veterans Affairs Medical Center, San Francisco, California 94121, Department of Neurology, University of California, San Francisco and Veterans Affairs Medical Center, San Francisco, California 94121, Department of Neurology, University of California, San Francisco and Veterans Affairs Medical Center, San Francisco, California 94121