"On the Glasgow coma scale your brain normally activates at a 15, and being completely brain dead is a three, and I was a four, so I was almost completely gone," Baskett told Ivanhoe.
Doctors treated Baskett with an IV infusion of the hormone progesterone. Researchers say if it's administered hours after injury, it can block damage to the brain tissue.
"Progesterone classically has been called a female hormone, but the reality is that it's actually a neurosteroid," David W. Wright, M.D., FACEP, director of Emergency Neurosciences at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Ga., told Ivanhoe. "It's made in the brain, by the brain, for the brain."
In a study involving 100 traumatic brain injury patients, progesterone reduced mortality by 50 percent and reduced disability and improved functional outcomes in those with moderate injuries.
"For the first time really since recorded history from NIH ... we may actually have a drug that will work for traumatic brain injury," Dr. Wright said.
As for Baskett?
"I forget things every now and then, but I've done that before, and I think everybody does, but my brain is 100 percent," he said.
A young man ready to put the past behind him and turn the page to a better life.
Researchers at 17 medical centers around the U.S. began an expanded double-blind study to test the effectiveness of progesterone therapy for TBI. The multi-center study is enrolling more than 1,100 traumatic brain injury patients over the next three years.
If you would like more information, please contact:
Lance Skelly
Emory University Media Relations
(404) 686-8538
