Wednesday, May 05, 2004
Cooler Heads Prevail
When newborns are deprived of oxygen during/after birth, they run significantly higher risks of brain damage and disabilities. Cooling their brains seems to provide some level of protection. This is a very interesting finding, although it's not entirely unprecedented. I don't have references handy, but there is evidence of a hypothermic protection effect both in stroke and pharmacological-induced insults to the brain. Specifically, I recall that in NMDA (Ecstasy) users, hyperthermia is linked to many of the permanent cognitive side-effects, with hypothermia found to be protective.
