Jean-Claude Baron is an Emeritus Professor of Stroke Medicine at the University of Cambridge. [1] He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. He has authored around 450 peer-reviewed articles. [2]
Jean-Claude Baron is an Emeritus Professor of Stroke Medicine at the University of Cambridge. [1] He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. He has authored around 450 peer-reviewed articles. [2]
Jean-Claude Baron studied clinical neurology at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, medical physics at the Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives in Orsay, and functional brain imaging at Harvard University in the United States. He received his medical education and training at the University of Paris, where he also specialized in Neurology. [3]
Jean-Claude Baron's principal research interests are in the pathophysiology of stroke and the processes of functional recovery after stroke, which he has mostly studied using imaging techniques.
He primarily used positron emission tomography (PET) in the study of cerebrovascular diseases, using it in conjunction with other techniques such as CT, MR, and SPECT to investigate the pathophysiology of transient ischemic attacks (TIAs) and acute ischemic stroke, as well as the mechanisms underlying post-stroke recovery, in both patients and animal models. [4] [5]
His main findings include the discovery of the ischemic penumbra in humans and the crucial role of hemodynamic impairment in carotid-territory TIAs, as well as crossed cerebellar diaschisis and thalamo-cortical diaschisis. [6] [7]
He has used functional and structural brain imaging to examine the mechanisms underlying cerebral amyloid angiopathy and neurodegenerative illnesses such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and Progressive Supranuclear Palsy. [8] [9] [10] [11]
Jean-Claude Baron has over 40 years of professional experience and is currently director of research at INSERM and Paris University. [12] [13]
Jean-Claude Baron has earned various accolades including the following.
A transient ischemic attack (TIA), commonly known as a mini-stroke, is a minor stroke whose noticeable symptoms usually end in less than an hour. A TIA causes the same symptoms associated with a stroke, such as weakness or numbness on one side of the body, sudden dimming or loss of vision, difficulty speaking or understanding language, slurred speech, or confusion.
Vascular dementia is dementia caused by a series of strokes. Restricted blood flow due to strokes reduces oxygen and glucose delivery to the brain, causing cell injury and neurological deficits in the affected region. Subtypes of vascular dementia include subcortical vascular dementia, multi-infarct dementia, stroke-related dementia, and mixed dementia.
Cerebrovascular disease includes a variety of medical conditions that affect the blood vessels of the brain and the cerebral circulation. Arteries supplying oxygen and nutrients to the brain are often damaged or deformed in these disorders. The most common presentation of cerebrovascular disease is an ischemic stroke or mini-stroke and sometimes a hemorrhagic stroke. Hypertension is the most important contributing risk factor for stroke and cerebrovascular diseases as it can change the structure of blood vessels and result in atherosclerosis. Atherosclerosis narrows blood vessels in the brain, resulting in decreased cerebral perfusion. Other risk factors that contribute to stroke include smoking and diabetes. Narrowed cerebral arteries can lead to ischemic stroke, but continually elevated blood pressure can also cause tearing of vessels, leading to a hemorrhagic stroke.
Cerebral edema is excess accumulation of fluid (edema) in the intracellular or extracellular spaces of the brain. This typically causes impaired nerve function, increased pressure within the skull, and can eventually lead to direct compression of brain tissue and blood vessels. Symptoms vary based on the location and extent of edema and generally include headaches, nausea, vomiting, seizures, drowsiness, visual disturbances, dizziness, and in severe cases, death.
Stroke is a medical condition in which poor blood flow to the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke:
Desmoteplase is a novel, highly fibrin-specific "clot-busting" (thrombolytic) drug in development that reached phase III clinical trials. The Danish pharmaceutical company, Lundbeck, owns the worldwide rights to Desmoteplase. In 2009, two large trials were started to test it as a safe and effective treatment for patients with acute ischaemic stroke. After disappointing results in DIAS-3, DIAS-4 was terminated, and in December 2014 Lundbeck announced that they would stop the development of desmoteplase.
Intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH), also known as hemorrhagic stroke, is a sudden bleeding into the tissues of the brain, into its ventricles, or into both. An ICH is a type of bleeding within the skull and one kind of stroke. Symptoms can vary dramatically depending on the severity, acuity, and location (anatomically) but can include headache, one-sided weakness, numbness, tingling, or paralysis, speech problems, vision or hearing problems, memory loss, attention problems, coordination problems, balance problems, dizziness or lightheadedness or vertigo, nausea/vomiting, seizures, decreased level of consciousness or total loss of consciousness, neck stiffness, and fever.
Cerebral infarction, also known as an ischemic stroke, is the pathologic process that results in an area of necrotic tissue in the brain. In mid to high income countries, a stroke is the main reason for disability among people and the 2nd cause of death. It is caused by disrupted blood supply (ischemia) and restricted oxygen supply (hypoxia). This is most commonly due to a thrombotic occlusion, or an embolic occlusion of major vessels which leads to a cerebral infarct. In response to ischemia, the brain degenerates by the process of liquefactive necrosis.
A watershed stroke is defined as a brain ischemia that is localized to the vulnerable border zones between the tissues supplied by the anterior, posterior and middle cerebral arteries. The actual blood stream blockage/restriction site can be located far away from the infarcts. Watershed locations are those border-zone regions in the brain supplied by the major cerebral arteries where blood supply is decreased. Watershed strokes are a concern because they comprise approximately 10% of all ischemic stroke cases. The watershed zones themselves are particularly susceptible to infarction from global ischemia as the distal nature of the vasculature predisposes these areas to be most sensitive to profound hypoperfusion.
NeuroAiD is a herbal supplement proposed to support functional recovery after strokes. There were two formulations of NeuroAiD: MLC601 (NeuroAiDTM) was first developed. Since 2018 MLC601 formulation is no longer on the market, and has been replaced by MLC901 (NeuroAiDTMII), a simplified formulation containing only 9 botanical ingredients. It can be administered orally or through a feeding tube.
The leptomeningeal collateral circulation is a network of small blood vessels in the brain that connects branches of the middle, anterior and posterior cerebral arteries, with variation in its precise anatomy between individuals. During a stroke, leptomeningeal collateral vessels allow limited blood flow when other, larger blood vessels provide inadequate blood supply to a part of the brain.
In pathology and anatomy the penumbra is the area surrounding an ischemic event such as thrombotic or embolic stroke. Immediately following the event, blood flow and therefore oxygen transport is reduced locally, leading to hypoxia of the cells near the location of the original insult. This can lead to hypoxic cell death (infarction) and amplify the original damage from the ischemia; however, the penumbra area may remain viable for several hours after an ischemic event due to the collateral arteries that supply the penumbral zone.
Cerebellar stroke syndrome is a condition in which the circulation to the cerebellum is impaired due to a lesion of the superior cerebellar artery, anterior inferior cerebellar artery or the posterior inferior cerebellar artery.
A silent stroke is a stroke that does not have any outward symptoms associated with stroke, and the patient is typically unaware they have suffered a stroke. Despite not causing identifiable symptoms, a silent stroke still causes damage to the brain and places the patient at increased risk for both transient ischemic attack and major stroke in the future. In a broad study in 1998, more than 11 million people were estimated to have experienced a stroke in the United States. Approximately 770,000 of these strokes were symptomatic and 11 million were first-ever silent MRI infarcts or hemorrhages. Silent strokes typically cause lesions which are detected via the use of neuroimaging such as MRI. The risk of silent stroke increases with age but may also affect younger adults. Women appear to be at increased risk for silent stroke, with hypertension and current cigarette smoking being amongst the predisposing factors.
Interventional neuroradiology (INR) also known as neurointerventional surgery (NIS), endovascular therapy (EVT), endovascular neurosurgery, and interventional neurology is a medical subspecialty of neurosurgery, neuroradiology, intervention radiology and neurology specializing in minimally invasive image-based technologies and procedures used in diagnosis and treatment of diseases of the head, neck, and spine.
Embolic stroke of undetermined source (ESUS) is an embolic stroke, a type of ischemic stroke, with an unknown origin, defined as a non-lacunar brain infarct without proximal arterial stenosis or cardioembolic sources. As such, it forms a subset of cryptogenic stroke, which is part of the TOAST-classification. The following diagnostic criteria define an ESUS:
Arterial spin labeling (ASL), also known as arterial spin tagging, is a magnetic resonance imaging technique used to quantify cerebral blood perfusion by labelling blood water as it flows throughout the brain. ASL specifically refers to magnetic labeling of arterial blood below or in the imaging slab, without the need of gadolinium contrast. A number of ASL schemes are possible, the simplest being flow alternating inversion recovery (FAIR) which requires two acquisitions of identical parameters with the exception of the out-of-slice saturation; the difference in the two images is theoretically only from inflowing spins, and may be considered a 'perfusion map'. The ASL technique was developed by John S. Leigh Jr, John A. Detre, Donald S. Williams, and Alan P. Koretsky in 1992.
Cerebral blood volume is the blood volume in a given amount of brain tissue.
Very low cerebral blood volume (VLCBV) is a measurement of hemorrhagic transformation degree in the tissue surrounding the lesion in strokes. It is counted as one of the penumbral imaging procedures along with less commonly used methods such as diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI). These are used to predict if there is going to be a hemorrhage after the treatment by tPA. In advanced centers, this measurement helps with using tPA beyond the standard time limit without risk of hemorrhage.
A cerebroprotectant is a drug that is intended to protect the brain after the onset of acute ischemic stroke. As stroke is the second largest cause of death worldwide and a leading cause of adult disability, over 150 drugs have been tested in clinical trials to provide cerebroprotection.
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