From: stdnt428@hampshire.edu
Date: Thu Sep 07 2000 - 01:10:03 MDT
Wednesday, September 06, 2000
Old Drug Helps Speech Skills
An old medication has stroke survivors talking -- literally, that is.
A new study published in the September issue of Stroke: Journal of the
American Heart Association finds the drug piracetam, which has been around
for three decades, helps stroke victims regain speech and language skills.
Researchers at the Max-Planck Institute for Neurological Research in
Cologne, Germany randomly assigned 24 stroke patients to one hour of speech
therapy a day, or speech therapy plus 4,800 milligrams of piracetam daily.
All of the patients had mild to moderate aphasia, a language-processing
disorder that occurs when a certain area in the brain that governs language
skills is cut off from oxygen due to a stroke.
After eight weeks of treatment, both groups showed improvement. But
the group taking piracetam showed greater improvements in spontaneous
speech, conversation, understanding the proper ordering of words in a
sentence, written language and comprehension. Researchers used brain scans
to find that those taking piracetam showed more activity in the areas of the
brain that govern language skills.
"There has been controversy about whether medications can improve the
effectiveness of speech therapy in helping stroke survivors regain functions
lost due to brain damage," says lead researcher Josef Kessler. The findings,
he adds, "link functional improvements on language tests with physical
changes in brain regions that govern language."
{Not sure the source of this article.....}
- ERIC
SMILE
SPACE MIGRATION
INTELLIGENCE INCREASE
LIFE EXTENSION
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