MEDIA RELEASE | MAY 25, 2009
Homework is the best medicine: Patients benefit from stroke research

Dr. Janice Eng

Stroke researchers at the University of British Columbia and Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute have developed a rehabilitation program that can dramatically improve recovery of arm function in stroke patients. Their work, to be published in the June 1st edition of high impact journal Stroke, reveals that patients who participated in the program had greater arm function at the end of four weeks compared to the control group. These differences were retained even five months post-stroke. The researchers followed 103 stroke patients at Vancouver General Hospital and three other hospital sites in Vancouver, Kelowna, and Victoria.

The research team, led by Janice Eng, scientist and physical therapist at GF Strong Rehabilitation Centre and professor in the Department of Physical Therapy at UBC, devised the Graded Repetitive Arm Supplementary Program (GRASP), a set of exercises for the arm and hand that patients can do themselves with minimal supervision by therapists. The program can be delivered in a sub-acute care hospital setting and continued at home. Patients receive an exercise book with written instructions and detailed drawings for how to perform each exercise, such as stacking blocks, squeezing balls, holding lightly weighted bean bags, and folding, buttoning, and pouring.

"The exercises sound very simple, but more than 70 per cent of people with stroke find it difficult to use their hands and arms for daily tasks," says Eng, who is a senior scientist at the Brain Research Centre and ICORD at UBC and Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute. "The ease of this program allows for a much higher amount of physical therapy for patients recovering from stroke in hospital than could ordinarily be delivered one-on-one by physical therapists. It also has the benefit of providing a way for patients' families to support the rehabilitation process."

Researchers also noted another intriguing finding, which showed patients in the GRASP group had less depressive symptoms compared to the control group. "This is a significant discovery, as up to 30 per cent of people post-stroke can develop depression," says Jocelyn Harris, a recent graduate from the PhD Rehabilitation Science program at UBC who helped design the study.

"We need to further explore this finding. It could be because better arm function leads to less depressive symptoms, or also that the GRASP patients felt more empowered to have more direct involvement with their own rehabilitation," says Harris, who is also an occupational therapist at GF Strong.

The ease of the program also allows for immediate uptake by health care providers. All four sites are now implementing GRASP, incorporating it into their inpatient or outpatient settings. The researchers will now examine the application of a patient managed program to leg rehabilitation following stroke and have received funding from the Heart and Stroke Foundation of BC and Yukon to develop the study.

Each year, 750,000 thousand individuals in North America experience a new stroke. It is the leading cause of serious long term disability in older adults and approximately 50% of all stroke patients are left with severe to moderate disability.

Major funding for this research has been provided by the Heart and Stroke Foundation of British Columbia & Yukon. Dr. Eng is supported by career scientist awards from the Canadian Institute of Health Research, the Canadian Government agency for health research, and the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research, British Columbia's provincially mandated health research organization.

Closer to the end of June 2009, Dr. Eng will be posting her GRASP program on her web site where you will be able to download all the instructions, exercise books, etc. www.rehab.ubc.ca/jeng

The Brain Research Centre comprises more than 200 investigators with multidisciplinary expertise in neuroscience research ranging from the test tube, to the bedside, to industrial spin-offs. The centre is a partnership of UBC and VCHRI.

The UBC Faculty of Medicine provides innovative programs in the health and life sciences, teaching students at the undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate levels, and generates more than $200 million in research funding each year.

VCH Research Institute is the research body of Vancouver Coastal Health Authority. In academic partnership with UBC, the institute advances health research and innovation across B.C., Canada, and beyond. www.vchri.ca.

For media enquiries, please contact:

Lisa Carver
VCHRI Communications Leader
Tel: 604.875.4111 x 61777
Cell: 604.319.7533


Brian Lin
UBC Public Affairs
Tel: 604.822.2234
Cell: 604.818.5685

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