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2009 Clinical Scholar Research Award

Greg Stratmann, MD, PhD

University of California, San Francisco
“The Clinical Scholar Research Award allowed me to address an important aspect of anesthesia research long before it was ripe for NIH funding. Federal agencies are now recognizing the importance of this research, and thanks to the IARS award, we now have strong preliminary data to support an application for federal funding.”

Dr. Stratmann’s Research

Dr. Stratmann is testing how anesthesia affects hippocampal function, and working to define the cognitive domain affected by infantile anesthesia. His hypothesis is that anesthesia given to children younger than two years old for more than two hours impairs hippocampal function as these children grow older. Dr. Stratmann aims to establish a cognitive test that is translatable from rodents to humans, so the effectiveness of potential strategies to treat or prevent cognitive decline after anesthesia in infancy can be assessed.

Key Publications

Effect of General Anesthesia in Infancy on Long-Term Recognition Memory in Humans and Rats.
Stratmann G, Lee J, Sall JW, Lee BH, Alvi RS, Shih J, Rowe AM, Ramage TM, Chang FL, Alexander TG, Lempert DK, Lin N, Siu KH, Elphick SA, Wong A, Schnair CI, Vu AF, Chan JT, Zai H, Michelle KW, Anthony AM, Barbour KC, Ben-Tzur D, Kazarian NE, Lee JY, Shen JR, Liu E, Behniwal GS, Lammers CR, Quinones Z, Aggarwal A, Cedars E, Yonelinas AP, Ghetti S

Anesthesia in infancy impairs performance in recognition memory tasks in mammalian animals, but it is unknown if this occurs in humans. Successful recognition can be based on stimulus familiarity or recollection of event details. Several brain structures involved in recollection…

Isoflurane differentially affects neurogenesis and long-term neurocognitive function in 60-day-old and 7-day-old rats.
Stratmann G, Sall JW, May LD, Bell JS, Magnusson KR, Rau V, Visrodia KH, Alvi RS, Ku B, Lee MT, Dai R

Anesthetic agents cause cell death in the developing rodent brain and long-term, mostly hippocampal-dependent, neurocognitive dysfunction. However, a causal link between these findings has not been shown…

Effect of hypercarbia and isoflurane on brain cell death and neurocognitive dysfunction in 7-day-old rats.
Stratmann G, May LD, Sall JW, Alvi RS, Bell JS, Ormerod BK, Rau V, Hilton JF, Dai R, Lee MT, Visrodia KH, Ku B, Zusmer EJ, Guggenheim J, Firouzian A

Millions of neonates undergo anesthesia each year. Certain anesthetic agents cause brain cell death and long-term neurocognitive dysfunction in postnatal day (P)7 rats. Despite its intuitive appeal, a causal link between cell death and neurocognitive decline…

Increasing the duration of isoflurane anesthesia decreases the minimum alveolar anesthetic concentration in 7-day-old but not in 60-day-old rats.
Stratmann G, Sall JW, Eger EI, Laster MJ, Bell JS, May LD, Eilers H, Krause M, Heusen F, Gonzalez HE

While studying neurotoxicity in rats, we observed that the anesthetic minimum alveolar anesthetic concentration (MAC) of isoflurane decreases with increasing duration of anesthesia in 7-day-old…