Whyte et al.

(2008)

USA

RCT

PEDro=7

N=12

Population: Moderate/ Severe TBI; Mean Age=35.75 yr; Gender: Male=8, Female=4; Median Time Post Injury=3.3 yr.

Intervention: In a crossover design, participants were randomly assigned to receive bromocriptine (1.25 mg 2×/d titrated to 5mg 2×/d over a 1 wk), followed by placebo or the reverse order. Each lasted 4 wk with a 1 wk washout period.

Outcome Measures: Attention Tasks.

1.        Though some improvements were observed in certain subtests of attentional tasks (e.g. speed decline, decline in responding, test of everyday attention), they were not significant.

2.        Overall results suggest bromocriptine had little effect on attention.

McDowell et al.

(1998)

USA

RCT

PEDro=4

N=24

Population: TBI; Median Age=32.5 yr; Gender: Male=20, Female=4; GCS Range=3-8; Time Post injury Range=27d-300 mo.

Intervention: In a crossover design, participants were randomly assigned to receive 2.5 mg bromocriptine followed by placebo, or the reverse order.

Outcome Measures: Dual-task paradigm (counting and digit span), Stroop Test, spatial delayed-response task, Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), reading span test, Trail Making Test (TMT), controlled oral word association test (COWAT), Control tasks.

1.        Following bromocriptine treatment there were significant improvements on the dual-task counting (p=0.028), dual-task digit span (p=0.016), TMT (p=0.013), Stroop Test (p=0.05), COWAT (p=0.02), and WCST (p=0.041).

2.        Bromocriptine had no significant effects on working memory (e.g. spatial delayed-response task and reading span test; p=0.978), or on control tasks (p=0.095).