Cerebrolysin combined with rehabilitation promotes motor recovery in patients with severe motor impairment after stroke

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial paper looks at Cerebrolysin.

This study aims to evaluate whether Cerebrolysin provides additional motor recovery on top of rehabilitation therapy in the subacute stroke patients with moderate to severe motor impairment.

Why It Was Studied

Cerebrolysin is a neuropeptide preparation with neuroprotective and neurorestorative effects.

Combining Cerebrolysin treatment with a standardized rehabilitation program may have a potential synergistic effect in the subacute stage of stroke.

Who Took Part

The abstract describes 70 patients taking part.

PubMed indexes the participants as middle-aged adults and older adults, both men and women.

A total of 70 patients (Cerebrolysin n = 35, placebo n = 35) with moderate to severe motor function impairment were included within 7 days after stroke onset and were randomized to receive a 21-day treatment course of either Cerebrolysin or placebo, given in addition to standardized rehabilitation therapy.

Assessments were performed at baseline, immediately after treatment as well as 2 and 3 months after stroke onset.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, multicenter and parallel-group.

The patients were allocated by chance, so the Cerebrolysin group and the comparison group should start out alike.

Neither the patients nor the staff measuring them knew who was on Cerebrolysin, so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

The comparison arm used a placebo, so changes seen with Cerebrolysin could be set against what happens without it.

Running at several centres spread the Cerebrolysin study over different clinics and patient groups.

The methods mention a period of 7 days.

This phase IV trial was designed as a prospective, multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-group study.

The plasticity of motor system was assessed by diffusion tensor imaging and with resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Amino Acids, Combined Modality Therapy, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Stroke and Stroke Rehabilitation.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Cerebrolysin in 70 patients over 7 days.

Results are reported in around 4 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2016 (BMC neurology), a journal based in England.

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