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Published online 23 May 2006 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news060522-9
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Sleeping pills offer wake-up call to vegetative patients
Drug could overcome brain shutdown caused by trauma.
Clinical researchers have discovered that they can rouse semi-comatose patients by giving them, bizarrely, a common sleeping drug. If more wide-ranging tests are successful, the drug could become the first effective treatment for 'persistent vegetative state', the condition at the centre of the US legal battle over sufferer Terri Schiavo last year.
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