As I have mentioned in previous blog posts, today we expect there to be a pharmaceutical solution for every medical condition imaginable. Though this mentality doesn’t transfer to concussions. When I think of concussions I normally think of the phrases “walk it off” or “you should take a break”. It’s a weird thought that someday after getting a good whack to the head to be told, “Hey you don’t look so good, go take some __blank__ medication”.
Today we are starting to see many different administrations bringing the concussion issue to the front of their concerns. High schools, colleges, and professional sport organizations all have to decide where they sit on the issue. Do teams take out their fan favorites and risk losing, just to possibly save them some brain cells down the line?
In the eyes of sports organizations in perfect world an athlete could get a concussion, take a pill, and be right back on the field with no worries of consequences. So how close are we to this “perfect world”. To answer this question we need to look where current research stands. Luckily I found an article (1) that was published only 6 months ago that deals with this exact issue.
PGI-02776 is a prodrug aimed at minimizing the effects of a concussion. When a concussion occurs many different processes are initiated. As you can see in the figure there are a few chemical imbalances that occur after getting hit, PGI-02776 is aimed at preventing the glutamate increase. One might think that Glutamate shouldn’t be a concern because its increase is the smallest, but it also must be kept in mind that Glutamate is also one of the most complicated. Glutamate has many different effects in the body and brain so keeping its concentration level is necessary for a good health.
So in any good scientific experiment it is a good first test to see if a drug is actually doing anything. When PGI-02776 was tested with a concussion the glutamate produced was 20% of what was seen with no drug. Which could be considered successful results. So what other results are seen? Researchers were interested in cognitive results of this drug, so they developed a maze for rats. With this maze the drugs affects on long-term and short-term memories could be tested.
There were three different groups of rats:
- Rats with no Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)
- Rats with TBI given PGI-02776
- Rats with TBI given placebo
As would be expected the group of rats with no TBI were able to finish the maze fastest and had the best rate of learning. Rats that had a TBI and were given a placebo finished the maze slowest and had the slowest rate of learning. Resulting in our PGI-02776 drugged rats doing better then non-medicated rats, yet still worse then the rats with no TBI, which is to be expected.
The 3 categories of rats were then put through a test of motor skills. This was done through a swim test. Interestingly enough the two groups that suffered a TBI did best in the swim test with the TBI + PGI-02776 group swimming the fastest. I don’t know what to make of this data and it seems neither did the research group, they didn’t touch on the subject after writing the results.
Take home messages?
It seems that there may be solutions to concussions in the future. But this research must also be taken with not a grain but a large chunk of salt, just because something works in rats doesn’t mean it will work in humans to the same extent. Also this research is really only focused on the positive outcomes it isn’t known what side effects with come from PGI-02776 in the human body.
(1) Feng, J.; Van, K. C.; Gurkoff, G. G.; Kopriva, C.; Olszewski, R. T.; Song, M.; Sun, S.; Xu, M.; Neale, J. H.; Yuen, P.; Lowe, D. A.; Zhou, J.; Lyeth, B. G. Post-injury administration of NAAG peptidase inhibitor prodrug, PGI-02776, in experimental TBI. Brain Res. 2011, 1395, 62-73.
