Effects
There is very little data on piracetam's effect on healthy people, with most studies focusing on people with seizures, dementia, concussions, or other neurological problems. A two week regimen of piracetam was reported in 1976 to enhance verbal memory in healthy college students in a double-blind, placebo-controlled study.
Numerous positive individual studies supported the use of piracetam in people suffering from a wide range of cognitive disorders,
A 2002 meta-analysis by UCB, S.A. concluded that piracetam had a therapeutic effect in older patients with cognitive impairment.
In 2008, a working group of the British Academy of Medical Sciences noted that many of the clinical trials of piracetam for dementia were methodologically flawed.
Several meta-reviews of literature on piracetam indicate that piracetam increases performance on a variety of cognitive tasks among dyslexic children, though this may reflect its enhancement of cross-hemispheric communication and of cognitive function in general, rather than a specific improvement in whatever causes dyslexia. Piracetam also seems to inhibit brain damage caused by a variety of factors including hypoxia and excessive alcohol consumption.
Piracetam has been studied in an extensive number of clinical experiments, and has shown positive results in the treatment of post-stroke aphasia, epilepsy, cognitive decline following heart and brain surgery, dementia, and myoclonus. Its peripheral vascular effect has indicated its use for vertigo, dyslexia and, at one time, sickle cell anemia as well, but a subsequent Cochrane review of the evidence found that it did not support piracetam's use in sickle cell crisis prevention.
Piracetam possesses pronounced antihypoxic and antiarrhythmic effect; the latter is carried out by decreasing the rhythm rate and increasing the contraction amplitude. The animals treated with piracetam in a dose when its antiarrhythmic effects (300 mg/kg) exhibited a decrease of the membrane potential of erythrocytes as compared with control. Similar effects occurred in the animals treated with lidocaine. It can be concluded that in certain types of arrhythmias the use of piracetam restores the normal rhythm of contractions that is perhaps connected with its positive influence on metabolic processes in the myocardium.
Piracetam appeared in animal studies to have increased communication between the two hemispheres of the brain and increased activity of the corpus callosum.
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