NEW YORK -- Researchers are reporting the first treatment to speed recovery from severe brain injuries caused by falls and car crashes: a cheap flu medicine whose side benefits were discovered by accident decades ago.
Severely injured patients who were given amantadine got better faster than those who received a dummy medicine. After four weeks, more people in the flu drug group could give reliable yes-and-no answers, follow commands or use a spoon or hairbrush -- things that few of them could do at the start. Far fewer patients who got amantadine remained in a vegetative state, 17 percent versus 32 percent.
"This drug moved the needle in terms of speeding patient recovery, and that's not been shown before," said neuropsychologist Joseph Giacino of Boston's Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, co-leader of the study. He added: "It really does provide hope for a population that is viewed in many places as hopeless."
Many doctors began using amantadine for brain injuries years ago, but until now there's never been a big study to show that it works. The results of the federally funded study appear in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.
Each year, an estimated 1.7 million Americans suffer a traumatic brain injury. About three-quarters are concussions or other mild forms that heal over time. But about 52,000 people with brain injuries die each year and 275,000 are hospitalized, many with persistent, debilitating injuries, according to government figures.
Amantadine, an inexpensive generic, was approved for the flu in the mid-1960s.
The study was done in the U.S., Denmark and Germany and involved 184 severely disabled patients, about 36 years old on average. About a third were in a vegetative state, meaning unconscious but with periods of wakefulness. The rest were minimally conscious, showing some signs of awareness. They were treated one to four months after getting injured, a period when a lot of patients get better on their own, Giacino noted.
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Flu drug speeds up brain recovery
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