The role of the drug nimodipine in cerebral hypoxia

What is it about?

Breathing lower levels of oxygen (hypoxia) e.g. when climbing mountains can result in damage to the brain. We know from other research that calcium levels in the brain play a key role in this process. The drug nimodipine belongs to a class of drugs known as "calcium channel antagonists" and selectively blocks calcium channels in the brain preventing large changes in calcium concentration. We therefore artificially lowered the level of oxygen being breathed by a group of healthy volunteers and assessed whether giving nimodipine affected the changes seen in the brain seen using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) sequences.

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Why is it important?

Nimodipine has been shown to improve outcomes after a type of stroke known as "subarachnoid haemorrhage" - caused by the rupture of a weakness in blood vessels in the brain called an aneurysm. However how it achieves this improvement remains unknown and it does not seem to exert the same benefit in other acute neurological conditions e.g. trauma. This study shows that nimodipine reduces brain swelling (cerebral oedema) when the brain has a reduced level of oxygen (hypoxia) which may underlie the clinical improvement seen with nimodipine in subarachnoid haemorrhage.