CHICAGO – The β-blocker propranolol may help some aphasic patients communicate more easily, at least in the short term, Dr. Yutaka Tanaka reported in a poster session at the annual meeting of the American Neurological Association.
β-blockers have been shown to lessen performance anxiety in nervous musicians and students.
This gave Dr. Tanaka and his colleagues the idea that the drugs might have the same effect for aphasic patients with performance anxiety.
Aphasic patients have been reported to score better on tests of functional communication than on more formal tests of specific linguistic ability, he said.
The investigators tested patients and controls on naming (Boston Naming Test) and verbal fluency (FAS; listing animals, vegetables, or numbers for 1 minute) for the first time 90 minutes after 10-mg propranolol was administered and at a second visit without any medication, said Dr. Tanaka, who is a neurologist in private practice in Ikoma-Gun, Japan.
Of 6 patients with Broca's aphasia and 4 with Wernicke's aphasia (mean age of 70 years), all 10 showed significant improvement on all of the tests after receiving propranolol. In all of the patients, the testing occurred more than 6 months after the onset of aphasia.
Propranolol did not significantly alter the performance of nine young or nine elderly control subjects on any of the tests.
Nine middle-aged control individuals significantly improved on two tests of fluency but not on the naming test when pretreated with propranolol, he said.
“We postulate that the patients with aphasia were more anxious than the other groups with regard to language tasks, and thus benefited from treatment with the β-blockers,” Dr. Tanaka said.