Brown Alpert Medical School’s Madsen on Making Key Finding That Could Predict Stroke – GoLocalProv

Wednesday, February 26, 2020

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Dr. Tracy Madsen, Warren Alpert Medical School

"I was very lucky to represent Brown at the International Stroke Conference this past week in Los Angeles and was really excited to talk about stroke and women," said Madsen. "I gave three different presentations on different subtopics and how were looking at stroke prevention and how we look through a sex-specific lens."

A lot of people know more about heart disease and heart attack than strokes. The typical leading causes are other chronic cardiovascular type diseases hypertension, diabetes, high cholesterol, said Madsen. They can really happen at any point children all the way through the elderly, we do know that the risk of stroke rises dramatically as we age.

Madsen is an Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine in the Division of Sex and Gender in Emergency Medicine within the Department of Emergency Medicine. Dr. Madsen completed both her undergraduate and medical degrees at Boston University before coming to Providence to complete a residency in Emergency Medicine.

Recovery is highly dependent on the type of stroke and the severity of stroke we see a whole spectrum. The chances of recovery really depend very highly on the severity of the stroke, and then also whether or not you get treatment in the acute window whether or not youre treated immediately versus waiting to come in, Madsen added.

Potential Breakthrough

"When I started looking at sex-specific stroke prevention, I started looking at some of the more common stroke or cardiovascular risk factors like hypertension and diabetes and how those actually differ between women and men so the next natural question is if risk factors like hypertension and diabetes differ by sex, what is driving those differences," said Madsen.

"One of my key projects at the International stroke conference focused on a protein that is very closely related to estrogen and testosterone. So I looked at protein called sex hormone-binding globulin like I said, its related to estrogen and testosterone," she said. "Researchers in the past have shown that low levels of this hormone are related to the development of diabetes later in life and also cardiovascular disease like heart attacks or coronary heart disease, so were finding similar things with stroke, and thats what I presented at the conference.}

"The next steps are starting to look at some of the biologic mechanisms behind that link so how the low levels of this hormone would be causing stroke, and is just associated or more of a cause so looking at the potential biologic pathways and whether or not theres a causal effect, and then how can that be harnessed into better prediction of stroke," said Madsen.

About Alpert Medical School -- and Smart Health

Since granting its first Doctor of Medicine degrees in 1975, the Warren Alpert Medical School has become a national leader in medical education and biomedical research.

By attracting first-class physicians and researchers to Rhode Island over the past four decades, the Medical School and its seven affiliated teaching hospitals have radically improved the state's health care environment, from health care policy to patient care.

"Smart Health" is a GoLocalProv.com segment featuring experts from The Warren Alpert Medical School GoLocal LIVE.

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Brown Alpert Medical School's Madsen on Making Key Finding That Could Predict Stroke - GoLocalProv