Brussels (AFP)

How to improve the lives of patients who wake up from a coma with brain damage preventing them from communicating? The question is central to the work of Belgian neurologist Steven Laureys, winner of a prize on Thursday encouraging medical research.

"On the brain, our ignorance is enormous" and these patients "are neglected by the medical world and society", assures AFP this doctor from the University Hospital Center of Liège (east), one of the world specialists in altered states of the awareness of the great accident victims.

Thursday in Brussels, he was awarded by the Princess Astrid of Belgium, sister of King Philippe, the Generet Prize 2019, rewarding research on rare diseases and endowed with one million euros.

Steven Laureys, who directs around thirty researchers within the "Coma Science Group", speaks of "a silent epidemic" about the 150 new cases identified each year in Belgium of people coming out of a coma with a limited consciousness.

Some get out of intensive care by being able to open their eyes, but their only movements are reflexes when asked.

Other much rarer cases concern patients whose consciousness is preserved but whose body is completely paralyzed.

Concretely, explains the 51-year-old Flemish neurologist, the endowment of the Generet price will allow to deepen an ongoing study on the effects of apomorphine for recovery after a coma.

This drug, already used for a long time for Parkinson's disease, could in the future treat "in a progressive and gentle way" the serious brain lesions treated today with helmets of electrical stimulation.

"For brain damaged patients, there is currently no treatment that has proven to be really effective. If it is found it will make a huge difference to their quality of life," said Leandro Sanz, one of the medical researchers.

The expertise of the "Coma Science Group" concerns people who fell into a coma after a head trauma, a cerebral hemorrhage or a cardiac arrest that also caused serious brain damage.

Steven Laureys notably treated the Belgian cyclist Stig Broeckx, victim of a heavy fall on the Tour of Belgium in May 2016 and remained in a coma for more than six months following several cerebral hemorrhages.

Today the latter can ride a bike again, "he has recovered motor control, intellectual functions (...) he is a real athlete with incredible motivation", enthuses Dr Laureys.

The Generet prize is awarded by the King Baudouin Foundation, a philanthropic organization collecting funds to support innovative projects in Belgium (€ 44.8 million in endowments in 2018).

The 2018 edition, the first for this award, rewarded Prof. Miikka Vikkula, a Finnish specialist in vascular anomalies working at the Catholic University of Louvain-la-Neuve (center).

© 2020 AFP