Therapeutic Hypothermia May Be Beneficial for Perinatal Stroke

“So at the end of the day, it’s still a question of whether cooling is actually associated with improvement in outcomes in perinatal stroke,” she continued. “But given these findings, it’s a more compelling question than before. It also raises the interesting question of, ‘Is this related to a lack of neonatal seizures?’ Cooling is regarded to be an anticonvulsant across the human age spectrum, and we certainly see the warming seizures in hypothermia. But there’s been no conclusive evidence to date that neonatal seizures by themselves are correlated with poorer outcomes in perinatal stroke.”

Dr. Harbert noted that future trials of therapeutic hypothermia for perinatal stroke should include more participants and incorporate different clinical trial designs. “But the key challenge there is going to be identifying your patients with stroke in a timely manner, because most kids with perinatal stroke present with seizure,” she said. “But that’s typically between 12 and 24 hours of life.”

—Colby Stong