Vitamin D aided progesterone in reducing traumatic brain injury – RCT Dec 2012

Comparison of the administration of progesterone versus progesterone and vitamin D in improvement of outcomes in patients with traumatic brain injury: A randomized clinical trial with placebo group

Adv Biomed Res 2012, 1:58
Bahram Aminmansour 1, Hossein Nikbakht 1, Abbas Ghorbani 2, Majid Rezvani 1, Paiman Rahmani 1, Mostaffa Torkashvand 1, Mohammadamin Nourian1, Mehran Moradi 1
1 Department of Neurosurgery, Isfahan University Of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran
2 Department of Neurology, Al-zahra Hospital, Isfahan University Of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran
Date of Submission 27-Apr-2012; Date of Acceptance 08-Jul-2012; Date of Web Publication 28-Aug-2012

Hossein Nikbakht, Neurosurgery Department, Al-Zahra Hospital, Isfahan University Of Medical Sciences, Isfahan; Iran

© 2012 Aminmansour et al; This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Background: Due to the heterogeneity of traumatic brain injury (TBI), many of single treatments have not been successful in prevention and cure of these kinds of injuries. The neuroprotective effect of progesterone drug on severe brain injuries has been identified, and recently, the neuroprotective effect of vitamin D has also been studied as the combination of these two drugs has shown better effects on animal samples in some studies. This study was conducted to examine the effect of vitamin D and progesterone on brain injury treatment after brain trauma.

Materials and Methods: This study was performed on patients with severe brain trauma (Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) ≤ 8) from April to September, 2011. The patients were divided to 3 groups (placebo, progesterone, progesterone-vitamin D), each with 20 people. Upon the patients' admission, their GCS and demographic information were recorded. After 3 months, they were reassessed, and their GCS and GOS (Glasgow outcome scale) were recorded. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS 18 software (SPSS Inc., Chicago IL, USA).

Results: Before intervention, GCS mean of the placebo, progesterone, and progesterone-vitamin D groups were 6.3 ± 0.88, 6.31 ± 0.87, and 6 ± 0.88, respectively. They increased to 9.16 ± 1.11, 10.25 ± 1.34, and 11.27 ± 2.27, respectively 3 months after intervention. There was a significant difference among GCS means of the 3 groups (P-value = 0.001). GOS was classified to 2 main categories of favorable and unfavorable recovery, of which, favorable recovery in placebo, progesterone, and progesterone-vitamin D was 25%, 45%, and 60%, respectively which showed a statistical significant difference among the groups (P-value = 0.03).

Conclusion: The results showed that recovery rate in patients with severe brain trauma in the group receiving progesterone and vitamin D together was significantly higher than that of progesterone group, which was in turn higher than that of placebo group.

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200 IU/kg for 5 days. For 100 kg person this would be 20,000 IU daily, pretty much a loading dose

Wonder how much vitamin D would have helped without progesterone

PDF is attached at the bottom of this page

See also VitaminDWiki

• All items in Surgery, trauma and vitamin D 352 items
• All items in category Intervention with Vitamin D 824 items
• Surgeon on a mission to promote vitamin D - Dec 2012 TBI
• Concussions (traumatic brain injury) increased 60 % in a decade, perhaps due to lower vitamin D
  Speculation: Fewer concussions by those having lots of vitamin D
• Overview Loading of vitamin D
• Proof that Vitamin D Works
• Vitamin D helps Progesterone treatment – July 2009
• Progesterone decreased by 10 percent for every 4 ng increase in Vitamin D – Aug 2010 natural progesterone
• Progesterone enhances Vitamin D ability to regulate T cells and immunity – Dec 2014

See also web

• Blog on this study behind a $5/month firewall at Vitamin D Council Dec 2012