Men More Likely to Benefit From Stroke Treatment

Ivanhoe Newswire
Tuesday, March 13, 2007; 12:00 AM

(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Men are more likely than women to benefit from a clot-busting drug after they have a stroke.

Researchers looked at 333 people who were treated with the drug tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) within three hours of having a stroke. The new study reveals men were about three-times as likely as women to be able to function independently three months after they had tPA, even though fewer men than women survived.

"There are potential biological reasons why women may not respond as well as men to tPA, including the possibility that women have higher levels of substances in the blood that can cause blood clots, as has been seen in women with heart disease," reports study author Michael S. V. Elkind, M.D., M.S., from Columbia University Medical Center in New York.

Dr. Elkind reports it is possible postmenopausal women are at greater risk of not responding well to tPA, whether or not they are on hormone replacement therapy.

Results also reveal patients who had a stroke on the left side of the brain were more than twice-as-likely to have good outcomes at three months and to survive three months after tPA than those whose stroke was on the right side of the brain.

Researchers stress women should still get immediate treatment if they have any signs of stroke. The authors want to make it clear that their results are secondary findings from a study done for other purposes. More research is needed to confirm these findings and to determine why women may not respond as well to tPA as men.

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SOURCE: NEUROLOGY, 2007;68:842-848