Awarded Indo-USA Brain Collaborative grant

Ludhiana, August 8, 2012: The Stroke Unit of Christian Medical College, Ludhiana has received a 1.18 crores grant from the Department of Biotechnology, India and National Institute of Health, USA.

Dr. Jeyaraj Durai Pandian, Professor and Head of Neurology is the receipient of this award. This grant money is to develop a National Stroke Registry between India and USA. Dr. Pandian is the Principal Investigator from India and Dr. Aneesh Singhal, Stroke programme, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston (Harvard University) is the Principal Investigator from USA in this grant.

Dr. Pandian said that this research grant would help India and USA to develop a common stroke database and do cross cultural studies. New information regarding various risk factors for stroke, clinical services for stroke and reasons for delay in treatment were some of the important parameters that would be studied in this research, he said, adding the information on stroke would be collected from 4 other centers in the country besides CMC Ludhiana.

The other centres were PGIMER Chandigarh, AIIMS New Delhi, NIMS Hyderabad and SCTIMST Trivandrum, he revealed.

Dr. Pandian stated that this research proposal was selected out of 72 grant applications. Dr. Yashpal Singh, Professor of Neurology said that this Indo-USA collaborative registry would collect data for the next 2 years and many sub-studies would be carried out once the stroke registry is established.

Dr. Abraham G Thomas, Director, CMC lauded the efforts of the Neurology department in getting the grant.