According to researchers at the Medical College of Georgia, estrogen can halt the condition of stroke damage by inactivating a tumor-suppressing protein that is known to prevent many forms of cancer.

Limor Raz, a fourth-year Ph.D. student in the MCG School of Graduate Studies, said that the research suggested that estrogen suppresses p53 after stroke leading to damage stoppage.

It was noted that estrogen has the potential to chemically alter p53 for attenuating the cascade and leading to reduced stroke damage.

From Sciencedaily.com:

Global cerebral ischemia, the most common type of ischemic stroke, in which blood flow to the brain is disrupted, was induced, damaging primarily the hippocampal CA1 region of the brain. In this study, a group of female rats were treated with estrogen versus placebo for seven days and estrogen’s effect on p53 signaling was examined.

“This part of the brain is extremely important because it is where our memory and learning occur,” Ms. Raz says. “During a stroke, you have all these things happening in your brain, and we’ve found that estrogen treatment is effective in reducing some of the damage.”

The next step, she says, is to determine why. “We know that it does, and now we need to find out how.”

Ms. Raz is working with Dr. Darrell Brann, chief of developmental neurobiology and associate director of the MCG Institute of Molecular Medicine and Genetics, and presented her research findings in Colorado at the American Physiological Society conference focusing on the cardiovascular effects of sex steroids and gender.