After inducing a stroke in the mice, Dore and his colleagues exposed the animals to either 125 parts per million or 250 parts per million of carbon monoxide or air.

Mice exposed to air had brain damage to about half of the side of the brain where the blood supply was deprived. The mice that inhaled the lower dose of carbon monoxide had about 34 percent brain damage. But in the animals exposed to the higher level of carbon monoxide, the damage was 18.8 percent.

The results were similar for mice treated an hour or three hours after the stroke.

Carbon monoxide is made naturally by the body and has been shown to have protective properties, Dore said.

The gas might be dilating blood vessels, which increases blood flow, and its anti-inflammatory properties might be preventing cell death. The gas also may be reducing water in the brain, which can cause excessive pressure and kill brain cells, Dore said.

St. Joe’s joins national cancer study St. Joseph Medical Center in Towson will participate in a national pilot study to find ways to detect, treat and prevent cancer.

Catholic Health Initiatives, the hospital’s Denver-based parent company, was awarded a four-year $1.1 million contract on behalf of the National Cancer Institute to be a part of the Cancer Genome Atlas project.

St. Joe’s is one of two Catholic Health hospitals to lead the early stages of the project, which directs the hospitals to collect biospecimens from specific tumor types.

The contact was awarded by SAIC-Frederick Inc., which operates NCI labs.

The Cancer Genome Atlas project started in 2005 as a large-scale way to find the genomic changes in cancer cells. The types of tumors being studied include brain cancer, ovarian cancer and lung cancer.

– Compiled by Sara Michael