Israeli scientists have made a new discovery regarding the use of hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) for the treatment of head injuries. Researchers from Tel Aviv University compared this treatment with the use of pharmacology (drugs) treatment available today for patients suffering from fibromyalgia as a result of a traumatic brain injury (TBI). The researchers found that the dedicated hyperbaric oxygen therapy is much more effective in reducing pain than the drug treatment, and it even resulted in the healing of 2 out of 5 patients.
Sure, when we think of Israel we think of Startup Nation with all of its new high-tech firms. But Israel is also known for all manner of scientific breakthroughs coming from its scientific community that leads the world. Some of these breakthroughs are medical, as in cancer research. And others might be usable in high-tech.
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For example, also in March, Scientists from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), together with colleagues from Israel, Germany and the USA, found that the gut microbiome may modulate the efficacy of CAR-T cellular immunotherapy in patients with B-cell lymphomas.
And, for the first time in history, a team of researchers from Tel Aviv University and the Israel Institute for Biological Research developed an mRNA-based vaccine that they say is 100% effective against a type of bacteria that is lethal to humans. The study, conducted in an animal model, demonstrated that all treated animals were fully protected against the bacteria.
The latest research was conducted by researchers from Tel Aviv University’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine, led by Prof. Shai Efrati, MD, from the Sagol Center for Hyperbaric Medicine and Research at the Shamir Medical Center, and Prof. Jacob Ablin, MD, from the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center. The results of the study were published in the journal PLOS One.
“Fibromyalgia is a chronic pain syndrome, from which between 2% – 8% of the population suffers,” explains Prof. Shai Efrati. “Until 15-20 years ago, there were doctors who believed that it was a psychosomatic illness and recommended that patients with chronic pain seek mental health care. Today we know that it is a biological illness, which damages the brain’s processing of the signals received from the body. When this processing is malfunctioning, you feel pain without any real damage in related locations. Fibromyalgia can be induced by variable triggers – from certain infections, as we have recently seen in post-COVID patients, through post-traumatic stress syndrome to head injuries. We wanted to test whether the new protocols of hyperbaric medicine can provide better results than pharmacological medicine, for patients in whom the fibromyalgia was induced by traumatic brain injury.”
Hyperbaric medicine is a form of treatment in which the patients stay in special chambers where the pressure is higher than the atmospheric pressure at sea level, and where the patients breathe 100% oxygen. Hyperbaric medicine is considered safe, used in many places including Israel, and is already used to treat a long list of medical conditions. In recent years, scientific evidence has been accumulating that certain, newly developed, dedicated hyperbaric treatment protocols can lead to the growth of new blood vessels and neurons in the brain.
In their current study, the researchers from Tel Aviv University recruited 64 Israelis aged 18 and older who suffered from fibromyalgia as a result of a head injury, and randomly divided them into two groups: one group was exposed to 100% pure oxygen at a pressure of two atmospheres for 90 minutes (with fluctuations in oxygen during the treatment every 20 minutes), 5 days a week, for three months. The second group received the conventional pharmacological treatment (i.e. the drugs pregabalin, which is known under the trade name “Lyrica”, and duloxetine, which is better known as “Cymbalta”)
According to Prof. Efrati, the importance of the research is in healing the damaged brain tissue – and not in treating its superficial symptoms: “In the group that received hyperbaric treatment, you could see the repair of the brain tissue, while in the control group there was only an attempt to relieve the pain – without treating the damaged tissue – and of course the medication group experienced the side effects associated with drug treatment. This is a difference in approach: to cure instead of just treating the symptoms. We assessed the improvement of the participants in the hyperbaric group more than a week after last hyperbaric session. More follow-up studies are needed to see the duration of the beneficial effect of the treatment and if and for whom additional treatment will be needed.“
It is important to emphasize that the dedicated hyperbaric oxygen treatment protocol found to be effective is only available in medical centers that have licensed hyperbaric chambers. Be careful of so-called “private chambers”, since these so-called chambers cannot provide the therapeutic protocol found to be effective, and they are not regulated and not approved for medical use.
