Every year, about 1.5 million people in the United States will suffer from a traumatic brain injury. Currently, about 5.3 million people are living with disability from a traumatic brain injury in the United States. Traumatic brain injury occurs when a sudden trauma causes damage to the brain. It can result when the head suddenly and violently hits an object, or when an object pierces the skull and enters brain tissue.
Dr. Douglas Katz, from the Braintree Rehabilitation Hospital and Boston University School of Medicine, said memory loss is among the most common problems after a brain injury.
“Traumatic brain injury affects various aspects of memory. We have been looking at various types of medications that can improve the neurotransmitters in the brain -- the chemical messengers that we use in our brain to help cells communicate with one another,” he said.
Katz, along with researchers from New York University School of Medicine and other institutions, recently studied a drug to target the problems of memory loss after a brain injury.
Researchers studied 134 men and women who suffered a traumatic brain injury. Some patients received the Alzheimer’s drug rivastigmine, while other received a placebo.
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Saving memories
A study found people with a traumatic brain injury benefited from a drug used on Alzheimer’s patients.
 
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After 12 weeks, researchers found severely impaired patients taking rivastigmine performed significantly better on attention and verbal memory tests than those on placebo. On one test, 30 percent of patients on the drug recalled five or more additional words compared to just 10 percent in the placebo group. The drug worked better among those with severe memory loss. The results were not significant among patients who had less severe memory loss. The results of the study were published in the September 12, 2006 issue of the journal Neurology.
Rivastigmine, which was approved by the FDA in 2000 to fight Alzheimer’s disease, is believed to enhance the function of acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter involved in memory and learning.
“Rivastigmine is a medication that is used to inhibit an enzyme in the brain that breaks down acetylcholine. When somebody takes this medication, more of the acetylcholine stays around in the gaps between the cells and more is around to act as a chemical messenger,” Katz said.
The drug is given in pill form and was taken twice a day in this study. Rivastigmine is well tolerated and safe. The most common side effects reported were nausea, upper respiratory tract infection, headache, dizziness and vomiting.
It is possible that the drug may be used off-label to treat patients with brain injuries, but it is not approved for this use. Katz said more studies are needed to determine how effective this medication will be for use in these patients.
In 2006, rivastigmine became the first product approved by the FDA to treat mild to moderate dementia in patients with Parkinson's Disease.
