A Recently Established Network for Clinical Stroke Trials in Japan

Abstract

Of 15 million people annually suffering from stroke, about 9 million are Asian (a massage from the Asian Pacific Stroke Organization). In Japan, stroke is the leading cause of disability requiring intensive nursing care and the 4th leading cause of death. Although the ranking of stroke article fractions and citation fractions of Japan was reported to be third between 2001 and 2011, Japan played small role in the multinational collaboration in stroke research (Asplund K, et al: Stroke 2012;43:830-837.) In this decade, we conducted several multicenter clinical stroke researches (J-STARS Echo Study, SUMURAI studies, THAWS trial). Also, we are participating international stroke trials and studies (ATACH II, TRIDENT, CADISP-plus, BEL-FMD). From our experiences, we strongly felt shortages of study coordinators and research nurses for staff education, administration of test drugs, data management in researcher driven stroke researches in Japan. To overcome these problems, we recently established Network for Clinical Stroke Trials (NeCST) in Japan (Stroke 2016;47:304-305). We are seeking opportunities for multinational collaborations with the Global Alliance of Independent Stroke Networks (GAINS) involving the NIH StrokeNet and the Canadian Stroke Consortium. Asian multinational researcher networks are also expected because we have specific disease characteristics such as high incidence of intracranial atherosclerosis and intracerebral hemorrhage. I will present our research experiences and NeCST.