# Progesterone for Traumatic Brain Injury



## SanDiegoEmt7 (Mar 15, 2010)

Progesterone May Help Treat Traumatic Brain Injury Patients, Phase III Trial To Start...

Read the rest here!


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## MS Medic (Mar 15, 2010)

Interesting. I've always been curious how people come up with some of these ideas though.


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## LucidResq (Mar 15, 2010)

MS Medic said:


> Interesting. I've always been curious how people come up with some of these ideas though.



Family Planning Doc bumped their head?


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## SanDiegoEmt7 (Mar 16, 2010)

> more than a quarter-century ago, physiological psychologist donald stein noticed that female rats recovered better from brain injuries that occurred when their natural progesterone levels were at their highest. He then tested whether giving progesterone to female rats injured at other points in their hormonal cycle and to male rats would improve recovery. The hormone worked in both cases.



10chars


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## VentMedic (Mar 16, 2010)

MS Medic said:


> Interesting. I've always been curious how people come up with some of these ideas though.


 
They come up with it by having an indepth knowledge of human anatomy, physiology and pharmacology. Someone might say if this med does this, why can't it work in another application as well? They might also be observant of lab results that are similar in various disease processes and attempt to find a common denominator for cause and effect. Some studies also come along by accident like when a side effect of a medication actually produces a good result for some other condition. Then there are those that seem like a great idea in theory but then don't hold water in actual use. MAST is a good example of that. 

This has been studied for several years with one of the hospitals in my area participating in the initial studies. 

For more reading:

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Progesterone+traumatic+brain+injury&hl=en&as_sdt=2001&as_sdtp=on


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## bstone (Mar 17, 2010)

I wonder why no one has tested this with estrogen. Women are half as likely to develop schizophrenia due to the presence of estrogen, which is a neuroprotectant. Perhaps I should write my PI and see about doing it.




> This review focuses on the neurotrophic and neuroprotective actions of estrogen in the brain, with particular emphasis on estrogen actions in the hippocampus, cerebral cortex and striatum. Sex differences in the risk, onset and severity of neurodegenerative disease such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and stroke are well known, and the potential role of estrogen as a neuroprotective factor is discussed in this context.


Source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2048656/, 




> Accumulating evidence from basic science studies demonstrates that estrogens exert profound protective actions against various forms of neurodegenerative diseases and injury.


Source: http://www.springerlink.com/content/kp5318l010p81633/


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## VentMedic (Mar 17, 2010)

bstone said:


> I wonder why no one has tested this with estrogen.


 
They may have looked at it but for a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) something is needed that has a fairly rapid onset and Progesterone has been shown to reduce the initial cytotoxic surge of inflammatory factors.


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## Chimpie (Mar 17, 2010)

_*Debate posts removed.*_

Reasoning: While the post removed were related to the thread, it was more of a one on one _challenge_ between two members.  It was perfectly okay to request the source of the info, but to bounce back and forth like that was not needed.


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## VentMedic (Mar 17, 2010)

Google Scholar is a decent search engine.

http://scholar.google.com/

You can type in what you are looking for and it will filter out all the laymen's articles that normally appear in a search.


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## Markhk (Mar 20, 2010)

bstone said:


> I wonder why no one has tested this with estrogen.



Studies are ongoing for TBI treatment with estrogen (one Phase II trial, Premarin IV) and other neuroprotective hormones. ProTECT just happens to be one trial that has reached the most critical phase of testing, Phase III.


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## bstone (Mar 20, 2010)

Markhk said:


> Studies are ongoing for TBI treatment with estrogen (one Phase II trial, Premarin IV) and other neuroprotective hormones. ProTECT just happens to be one trial that has reached the most critical phase of testing, Phase III.



Good to know. Thanks!


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