One Doctor's Lone Quest to Heal Brain Injury
As a young researcher in the 1960s, Donald G. Stein tested rats with brain injuries to see the effect on their behavior. Outside the scope of the research he noted that some female rats promptly recovered from their injuries, while males remained impaired. Donald G. Stein, a medical researcher at Emory University, may be on the path to treating traumatic brain injuries. The solution may be as simple as providing head injury patients with high dosages of progesterone. Decades of research conducted in his spare time and with little funding, led him to a surprising hypothesis: that progesterone, a natural female hormone that protects fetuses in the womb, may actually protect and heal injured brains. He found that female rats with much higher, pregnancy-level amounts of progesterone did far better than other rats in following mazes. Even male rats also recovered far better from injury when given the hormone, performing just as well as the highest-performing females. The stuff worked when given up to 24 hours after injury. Over the next 40 years his work slowly helped overturn medical orthodoxy stating that brain tissue, once injured, stays that way. Now he and colleagues plan a large-scale human trial over the next several years. While the outcome is far from assured, the effort could produce a new treatment for the estimated 10 million people world-wide who suffer traumatic brain injuries each year.
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