Conditions: Acute Stroke
Keywords: acute stroke, IV rt-PA, Activase, Alteplase
Allocation: NA | Intervention model: SINGLE_GROUP
Enrollment: 88
Healthy volunteers: no

Brief summary:
This study was jointly developed and is jointly led by investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital and the intramural division of NINDS. We are doing this research study to find out if Activase ® (also called alteplase or rt-PA) can safely be given to people with an acute ischemic stroke when their stroke onset was not witnessed making them ineligible for standard thrombolytic (clot busting) therapy. We also want to find out if rt-PA can help people recover better from their stroke.

The purpose of this study is to: 1) see if it is safe to give intravenous (IV) rt-PA to people with unwitnessed stroke but with MRI evidence of early ischemic stroke, 2) see if rt-PA is effective if given to people who are selected for treatment based on MRI evidence of an early stroke, and 3) get information about this new MRI diagnostic methods for guiding stroke treatment.

Detailed description:
This study was jointly developed and is jointly led by Massachusetts General Hospital and the NINDS. This is a multi-center, open-label, Phase IIa safety study in adult acute ischemic stroke patients to determine if it is safe to extend intravenous thrombolytic treatment to subjects who are evaluated within 24 hours from last known well ("stroke onset") and eligible to receive thrombolytic treatment within 4.5 hours from symptom discovery with the assistance of an MRI-based "witness" when no human witness of stroke onset is available. The study is designed to investigate the safety in using standard diagnostic MRI in selecting patients for thrombolytic therapy when the last known well time places the patient beyond the current IV thrombolytic time-window.

Arms:
arm 1: open-label

Interventions: intervention 1: IV rt-PA
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: open-label

Protocol document: