Clinical Study Of The Effects Of Ginkgo Biloba Capsule On The Prognosis And Platelet Function In Patients With Acute Ischaemic Stroke

Background and Objective In acute cerebral ischemia,lack of oxygen and energy induces cell death and subsequent impaired neuropsychiatric functions and disability.Thus, it is really important to develop medications with neuroprotective effect for cerebral ischemia therapy. Ginkgo Biloba extract 761 (EGb 761), a patented and well-defined mixture of active compounds extracted from Ginkgo biloba leaves, contains many active components, such as flavonoids,terpenoids and so on. These compounds have been demonstrated to reduce oxidative stress, prevent platelet activation and apoptosis. This study is to evaluate the clinical efficacy and safety of Ginkgo biloba extract in the treatments of patients with acute cerebral ischemia.Methods 50 patients with acute cerebral ischemia meeting the inclusion criteria were randomly assigned to two groups(treatment and control groups). All the patients were treated with conventional treatments in stroke unit.In addition to conventional therapy,the treatment group also received "Ginkgo Leaf Capsule 0.4g po tid" treatment for 3 months as compared with control group. NIHSS, Barthel index and MMSE scores of the two groups were evaluated before the treatments, after two-weeks’treatments and after three months’followed up respectively. Meanwhile,we also evaluated the TEG change of 23 patients after treated with Aspirin together with or without Ginkgo Leaf Capsule for 2 weeks.Results The baseline clinical characteristics were similar and there were no significant differences between the two groups (p>0.05). After two-weeks’ treatments, NIHSS, Barthel index and MMSE scores did not differ significantly in the two groups, though there was an uptrend in the Barthel index scores in treatment group. After three months,as compared with control group, treatment group showed significant reduction of NIHSS scores (p<0.05), and increased Barthel index and MMSE scores (p<0.05).Adding Ginkgo Leaf Capsule to the Aspirin therapy extended R time.decreased MA,a-angle and platelet aggregation ratio in treatment group (p<0.05).Conclusions Combining long-term Ginkgo Leaf Capsule with conventional treatment in stroke unit for patients with acute cerebral ischemia has been shown to significantly improve the patients’ outcomes, either in daily living activity abilities or in cognitive functions, especially in the patients who continuously received the treatment of Ginkgo Leaf Capsule. The risk of severe hemorrhage did not increase in treatment group as compared with control group. As to TEG outcome, combined therapy can mitigate hypercoagulable state of patients with cerebral infarction.