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(Stroke. 2007;38:2204.)
© 2007 American Heart Association, Inc.

Emerging Therapies

The EXCITE Trial

A Major Step Forward for Restorative Therapies in Stroke

Steven C. Cramer, MD

From the Departments of Neurology and Anatomy & Neurobiology, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, Calif.

Correspondence to Steven C. Cramer, MD, University of California, Irvine Medical Center, 101 The City Drive South, Building 53 Room 203, Orange, CA 92868-4280. E-mail scramer@uci.edu

Marc Fisher MD Kennedy Lees MD Section Editors:

Key Words: clinical trial • recovery • stroke

An extract of the first 250 words of the full text is provided, because this article has no abstract.

Much of the attention in the field of stroke is focused on prevention, emergency response, and management of the acute inpatient stay. Despite these efforts, many patients are left with substantial disability. Patients survive their stroke for a mean of 8 years, making poststroke disability a highly prevalent condition; most of the days during which stroke affects the life of the patient occur in this chronic disability phase.

Increased attention is being paid to an emerging set of therapeutic targets that are related to repair and restoration. Such restorative therapies focus on improving function in surviving brain areas rather than salvaging acutely threatened tissue and therefore might be available to a high proportion of patients with stroke. Animal studies have suggested a wide range of potential restorative therapies, including interventions based on physical, cellular, pharmacological, and electromagnetic approaches. However, to date, there has been limited translation of these preclinical findings into late-phase human clinical trials. In this regard, the Extremity Constraint Induced Therapy Evaluation (EXCITE) trial¹ is a major step forward. It is unique among trials of restorative interventions for its size, meticulous multisite organization, preparation,² duration of follow up, derivation from biological principle, and application of clinical trial methodology. In many ways, the EXCITE trial represents a paradigmatic shift in restorative stroke trials.

The EXCITE trial was a prospective, single-blind, randomized, multisite clinical study conducted at 7 US academic institutions between 2001 and 2003. The study randomized a total of 222 patients with a first ischemic or hemorrhagic stroke. . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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