“We Were Right And The Doctors Were Wrong.”
The words of Pat Flores, the mother of George Melendez, a severely brain damaged man who doctors once described as a vegetable. After being given the sleeping pill Ambien (zolpidem), he is able to talk with his parents and is greatly improved. It all came about through an accidental discovery.
For three years, Riaan Bolton has lain motionless, his eyes open but unseeing. After a devastating car crash doctors said he would never again see or speak or hear. Now his mother, Johanna, dissolves a pill in a little water on a teaspoon and forces it gently into his mouth. Within half an hour, as if a switch has been flicked in his brain, Riaan looks around his home in the South African town of Kimberley and says, "Hello." Shortly after his accident, Johanna had turned down the option of letting him die.
Three hundred miles away, Louis Viljoen, a young man who had once been cruelly described by a doctor as "a cabbage", greets me with a mischievous smile and a streetwise four-move handshake. Until he took the pill, he too was supposed to be in what doctors call a persistent vegetative state.
Across the Atlantic in the United States, George Melendez, who is also brain-damaged, has lain twitching and moaning as if in agony for years, causing his parents unbearable grief. He, too, is given this little tablet and again, it's as if a light comes on. His father asks him if he is, indeed, in pain. "No," George smiles, and his family burst into tears.
It all sounds miraculous, you might think. And in a way, it is. But this is not a miracle medication, the result of groundbreaking neurological research. Instead, these awakenings have come as the result of an accidental discovery by a dedicated - and bewildered - GP. They have all woken up, paradoxically, after being given a commonly used sleeping pill.
Across three continents, brain-damaged patients are reporting remarkable improvements after taking a pill that should make them fall asleep but that, instead, appears to be waking up cells in their brains that were thought to have been dead. In the next two months, trials on patients are expected to begin in South Africa aimed at finding out exactly what is going on inside their heads. Because, at the moment, the results are baffling doctors
It is quite a long article, but this is stunning news. The drug has been tested haphazardly at this point, but about 60% of those given the medication show improvement. The drug may be even more useful in those less severely damaged. A clinical study is about to get underway. Doctors have absolutely no idea why this is working the way it does.
The debate about when to remove people from life support just got a lot more complicated.
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Sensible Mom — Wednesday, 13 September , 2006 @ 9:38 am
By Ted Goldman, Wednesday, 13 September , 2006 @ 7:33 am
“Helpless” coma patient given sleeping pill and awakes.
Hmmm…Does anyone remember Terry Shaivo?
By Sir Oolius, Wednesday, 13 September , 2006 @ 11:07 am
I’ll have to jump in here about this Schiavo talk. It’s likely that Ambien may affect GABA receptors whose expression patterns change over the course of time the patient spends in coma. IMHO, these altered receptors are likely to be located somewhere between the reticular system and the cortex (my personal hypothesis) in areas that affect cortical arousal. In Terri’s case, according to the autopsy, the basal ganglia, large portions of the cortex and the cerebellum were gone, nada, zip, zero neurons for Ambien to affect and no neurons to project to for ths effect to be noticed.
On the other hand, had the family and husband known of this putative treatment, say 10 years prior, it might have had an effect since presumably some of those neurons would have still been around.
Once again, that’s just my opinion after having read the Guardian article and not having any other information on this phenomenon. But either way it looks like quite an amazing discovery and it’s extremely exciting in many, many ways…from patient care to pharmacology to understanding neural networks.