jeudi 1 mars 2018
There's a 1 in 4,000 Chance Your Newborn Had a Stroke at Birth, but Don't Freak Out
Although it seems unbelievable, it's not rare for a newborn baby to experience a stroke. In fact, at least one in 4,000 newborns are affected by a "perinatal" stroke before, during, or after birth - a shocking statistic for any person, especially a parent, to hear. However, according to recent study results, there may not be a reason to freak out over this news, as apparently strokes don't have the same lasting impacts on newborns as they do for adults.
The study, which was led by Georgetown University Medical Center investigators, found that 10 to 20 years after a newborn suffered a stroke that affected the left side of their brain - which is where language is normally located - these individuals used the right sides of their brains for storing language. Out of the 12 individuals - ages 12 to 25 - studied, all had a left-brain perinatal stroke, all used the right side of their brains for language, and all had good, normal language and excellent basic cognitive functions. What's more, imaging studies revealed that the study subjects' right-brain language regions were exact mirrors of where they would typically be on the left side.
Elissa L. Newport, PhD, leader of the study, professor of neurology at Georgetown University School of Medicine, and director of the Center For Brain Plasticity and Recovery at Georgetown University and MedStar National Rehabilitation Network, says that these findings "demonstrate how 'plastic' brain function is in infants."
"These young brains were very plastic, meaning they could relocate language to a healthy area," Newport said. "We believe there are very important constraints to where functions can be relocated. There are very specific regions that take over when part of the brain is injured, depending on the particular function. Each function, like language or spatial skills, has a particular region that can take over if its primary brain area is injured. This is a very important discovery that may have implications in the rehabilitation of adult stroke survivors."
As for the damage that we've come to associate with strokes in adults, no such trauma seemed to be present for the 12 individuals studied. The only "telltale signs of prior damage" to the subjects' brains included a slight limp for some, slightly slower neural processing, and the fact that many had dominant left hands because the strokes rendered their right-hand function impaired.
Newport and her team have plans to extend the study to include more people affected by perinatal strokes (both on the left and right side of the brain) and are collaborating on additional studies "that may reveal the molecular basis of plasticity in young brains - additional information that might help switch on plasticity in adults who have suffered stroke or brain injury."
Although that one-in-4,000-newborns statistic sounds pretty scary and it's clear that not enough research has been done surrounding perinatal strokes, it seems as though this small study's findings can provide parents with the reassurance that their child's brain will do its best to recover itself if it were affected by such a stroke at birth.
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