Cognitive changes after stem cell transplantation in a patient with subcortical stroke.
The authors report a case of a 55-year-old Caucasian woman who received autologous bone marrow stem cell transplantation 3 years after a subcortical stroke. She exhibited positive cognitive changes 6 months and 1 year after the surgery without rehabilitation. The blood flow changes, measured with SPECT, were statistical significant in prefrontal areas. During the presurgical neuropsychological assessment, the patient presented a critical speech reduction, reflected in impaired performance in verbal fluency, vocabulary and in each task which required overt verbal response. One year later, she showed improvement in mental flexibility, receptive language, phonological fluency, verbal memory and auditory verbal memory. Positive cognitive changes in verbal and executive functions seem to be contingent on increased blood flow in prefrontal areas. Posterior neuropsychological evaluation 3 and 5 years after transplantation did not show deterioration of the cognitive improvement.
Department of Neuropsychology, International Center for Neurological Restoration (CIREN), Havana, Cuba. marial@cneuro.edu.cu
Maria L
ML
Bringas
Carlos
C
Suarez
Carlos A
CA
Sanchez-Catasus
Lazaro M
LM
Alvarez
Pedro
P
Valdes
Sonia
S
Salazar
Dora
D
Chongo
Marjan
M
Jahanshahi
D002560:Cerebrovascular Circulation; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008875:Middle Aged; D064847:Multimodal Imaging; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D049268:Positron-Emission Tomography; D033581:Stem Cell Transplantation / Q000009:adverse effects*; D020521:Stroke / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000628:therapy*; D015899:Tomography, Emission-Computed, Single-Photon; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed