Recovery speeded in brain injuries

Press, 3 July 1985, Page 6

Recovery speeded in brain injuries

NZPA-AP Albuquerque Experiments in which rats and cats recovered from brain injuries three times as quickly as normal after doses of amphetamines may lead to the first treatment to speed human recovery, a researcher has said. Dr Dennis Feeney, professor of psychology and physiology at the University of New Mexico, said that without the drugs, rats normally took three weeks to recover, while cats took from three to six months. “But with amphetamines, in a rat we could get very, very good recovery in four to five days,” Dr Feeney said. Cats could leave the hospital in 21 to 22 days instead

of three to six months. “What we did was to accelerate the normal process of recovery,” Dr Feeney said. Physicians have been unable to promote recovery from brain injuries. “We can stop it from bleeding and swelling and getting worse, but we can’t make it get better,” he said. Dr Feeney said he and Mr James Davis, a physician, were doing pilot studies using amphetamines on human stroke patients. Amphetamines may not be a total answer because they do not appear to work on injuries in certain areas of the brain, and can cause many side effects, including higher blood pressure, restlessness and hyperactivity,

he said. “Amphetamine is not a very good drug. We are looking at other drugs that have-weaker side effects.” “Amphetamines alone do not accelerate recovery. It has to be combined with some type of physical therapy, like walking. “The drug treatment relieves depression in normal tissue that is remote from the site of injury,” Dr Feeney said. The experiments had suggested a time limit on how long a brain injury was receptive to the treatment. “We have examined this mostly in the visual systems of cats,” he said. “We can wait as long as 10 days. If we wait three months, it seems to be too late.”