The Effect of Cerebrolysin on Anxiety, Depression, and Cognition in Moderate and Severe Traumatic Brain Injury Patients: A CAPTAIN II Retrospective Trial Analysis

Abstract

Background and Objectives: Traumatic brain injuries represent an important source of disease burden requiring emergency inpatient care and continuous outpatient tailored rehabilitation. Although most TBIs are mild, patients are still developing post-TBI depression, anxiety, and cognitive impairments. Our secondary retrospective trial analysis aimed to (1) analyze correlations between HADS-Anxiety/HADS-Depression and scales that measure cognitive and motor processes in patients treated with Cerebrolysin compared to the placebo group and (2) compare anxiety and depression scores among the two treatment groups. Materials and Methods: Our secondary retrospective analysis focused on TBI patients with moderate and severe disability divided into two groups: Cerebrolysin (treatment) and saline solution (procedural placebo). We analyzed data from 125 patients. We computed descriptive statistics for nominal and continuous variables. We used Spearman’s correlation to find associations between HADS and other neuropsychological scales and the Mann–Whitney U test to compare HADS-Anxiety and HADS-Depression scores among the two study arms. Results: Our sample consisted of patients with a mean age of 45.3, primarily men, and with a 24 h GCS (Glasgow Coma Scale) mean of 12.67. We obtained statistically significant differences for HADS-Anxiety during the second and third visits for patients treated with Cerebrolysin. Our results show that Cerebrolysin has a large effect size (0.73) on anxiety levels. In addition, there are positive and negative correlations between HADS-Anxiety and Depression subscales and other neuropsychological scales. Conclusions: Our secondary database analysis supports the existing body of evidence on the positive effect of Cerebrolysin on post-TBI mental health status. Future confirmatory trials are necessary to clarify the link between the intervention and measured outcomes.

Cerebrolysin and repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) in patients with traumatic brain injury: a three-arm randomized trial

“…Our findings highlight that the combination of rTMS and Cerebrolysin is safe and well tolerated by patients with traumatic brain injury. While primary outcomes and their subscales did not show statistically significant differences, the descriptive trends in this study support existing literature on the efficacy and safety of both rTMS and Cerebrolysin ( Muresanu et al, 2016 ; Guekht et al, 2017 ; Beghi et al, 2021 ; Pink et al, 2021 ; Mureşanu D. F. et al, 2022 ; Mureşanu I. A. et al, 2022 ).…”

Recent advances in the study of sepsis-induced depression

“…Depression is a common mental disorder in modern society and can impair physical functioning; [2] , [3] the emotional and neurocognitive manifestations include insomnia, overeating, obesity, diabetes, [4] , [5] and memory deficits, which can negatively impact daily work [6] , [7] , [8] and life activities of patients. [9] , [10] Numerous studies have used non-invasive neuroimaging approaches to investigate the pathologic changes in brain anatomy associated with depression.…”