Treatment with progesterone, a female sex hormone, which is used in the contraceptive pill, could improve the outcome for patients with severe head injuries. A study published in BioMed Central's open access journal Critical Care found significant improvement in patients with severe traumatic brain injury treated with progesterone at the acute stage.
Traumatic brain injury causes a cascade of chemical reactions, which leads to the death of brain cells. Previous studies in animals have suggested that progesterone may mitigate the severity of brain injury by protecting neurons in the brain from these chemical reactions. However, there has previously been no information about therapeutic benefit of post-TBI progesterone injections in humans and the new study aimed to address this.
The research team in China, supervised by Professor Weiqi Yan, studied 159 patients with severe TBI admitted within eight hours of injury. In this randomized, double-blind trial approximately half the patients received progesterone and the other half placebo for five days after brain injury.
Patient outcomes were classified using the Glasgow Outcome Scale either as favourable (good recovery or moderate disability) or unfavourable (severe disability, vegetative state or death).
At both three and six months after treatment, significantly more patients given progesterone had favourable outcomes compared to patients given placebo. No complications or adverse events were seen in the patients given progesterone. As lead author Dr. Giomin Xiao says; "The results provide information important for further multicentre clinical trials on progesterone as a promising neuroprotective drug".
Reference
BioMed Central/Critical Care. "Pill Ingredient Could Prevent Brain Damage After Head Injury." ScienceDaily 2nd May 2008
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