Cerebrolysin adjuvant treatment in Broca's aphasics following first acute ischemic stroke of the left middle cerebral artery

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial paper looks at Cerebrolysin.

Who Took Part

The study group was 104 patients.

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were young adults, adults, middle-aged adults and older adults, both men and women.

The researchers registered 2212 consecutive Broca's aphasics following an acute ischemic stroke admitted in four departments of neurology in Romania, between September 2005 and September 2009.

The following inclusion criteria were used for this study: age 20-75 years, admission in the hospital within 12 hours from the onset of the symptoms, diagnosis of first acute left middle cerebral artery (MCA) ischemic stroke, presence of large artery disease (LAD) stroke, a NIHSS score of 5-22 points, and a therapeutic time window within 72 h.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized, open-label and placebo-controlled study.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got Cerebrolysin and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

Being open-label, the Cerebrolysin study did not mask who received what.

A placebo (an inactive look-alike) gave the Cerebrolysin group a baseline to be compared against.

The timeline in the abstract includes 90 days.

Language was evaluated with the Romanian version of the Western Aphasia Battery (WAB).

Fifty two patients were treated with Cerebrolysin (Cerebrolysin group) as an adjunctive treatment.

A placebo group, which received saline infusions (n=104 patients) were matched to the NIHSS and WAB scores, gender and age of the Cerebrolysin group at baseline.

The researchers assessed spontaneous speech (SS), comprehension (C), repetition (R), naming (N), and Aphasia Quotient (AQ) scores of the two groups in an open label design, over 90 days, the mRS scores and mortality.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Amino Acids, Aphasia, Broca, Chemotherapy, Adjuvant, Infarction, Middle Cerebral Artery, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Neuroprotective Agents and Romania.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, open-label and placebo-controlled study of Cerebrolysin in 104 patients over 90 days.

Its findings take up roughly 5 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2010 (Journal of medicine and life), a journal based in Romania.

More context: the Cerebrolysin compound page, all human trials.