Researchers from the University of Calgary and Helsinki University tested the safety of the drug, NA-1, on a group of 185 patients undergoing operations to remove brain aneurysm - a bulge in an artery which can burst and cause bleeding.
Small strokes are a common complication arising from operations on the brain, but injecting the drug after surgery was found to reduce the number of affected sites by 40 per cent, 'The Telegraph' reported.
Patients were given the drug, which disrupts a protein linked to stroke damage, after surgery and the damage to their brains was measured using MRI scans.
Results showed that patients who were given the drug had an average seven lesions, or damaged sites, compared with 12 in those given a placebo.
Although, there was no significant difference in the overall size of the damaged area, this may have been because there were too few patients to notice a clear difference, the researchers said.
Researcher Michael Hill of the University of Calgary, who led the study, said safe drugs to protect the brain during operations that restrict blood flow to the brain was a "major unmet need in stroke treatment".
"Our research, which builds on existing animal studies, suggests that intravenous infusion of NA-1 reduces tissue damage in patients who suffer a small stroke after an operation to repair a brain aneurysm, and further research is now needed to investigate the efficacy of neuroprotection in larger clinical trials," he said.
"Only after such trials will we know whether NA-1
