Parkinson’s drug may help with brain injury

Daily doses of a drug used to treat Parkinson’s disease significantly improved function in severely brain-injured people thought to be beyond treatment, scientist reported.  The improvements were modest, experts said & hardly amounted to a cure, but the progress was meaningful & if replicated, would give rehabilitation doctors something they’ve never had- a standard treatment for injuries that are not all standard or predictable in the ways they affect the brain.

Doctors have long experimented with the Parkinson’s drug- amantadine hydrochloride, as well as many others to treat severe brain injuries, with mixed & uncertain results. Previous studies of amantadine suggested some benefit but the numbers wer small & experts were unsure of the findings.

The new experiment out those doubts to rest, by testing the drug against a placebo in 2 large groups of patients.

A consortium of researchers from 11 clinics enrolled 184 patients who recently had a traumatic brain injury from a car accident or from blows to the head. Some were in a vegetative state, breathing, their eyes open when awake, but unresponsive to commands or prompts.

Others were in what is known as a minimally conscious state, able to track objects & follow commands once in a while, but not predictably.

The research team divided the patients into 2 groups= carefully matched for the severity of their injuries.

Members of 1 group got 2 doses of amantadine a day, given through their feeding tubes. Members of the other group received placebo pills.

After 4 weeks, the researchers analysed the patients’ progress, using a standard scale that rates abilities in such areas as coordination & communication. The group receiving amantadine showed more improvement by 2 points on the disability scale. 2 points is not a dramatic difference, but it occurred in just a month, a short period of time in terms of recovery.

When doctors took patients off the drug, the rate of recovery slowed down. The patients on the drug showed no adverse effects, the researchers said.

Among other effects, amantadine increases the activity of dopamine, a chemical messenger that is highly active in the frontal areas of the brain behind the forehead.

Those areas control attention & help plan & execute deliberate actions & responses & are at least partly damaged of offline in people with severe brain injuries.