Hey, Sazi
Disclaimer: I have never read any literature on Piracetam. All the following information is derived from personal experience and must be treated as such (ie, anectodal evidence
🙂)
I come from a country where Piracetam use is very widespread. It is used for everything and anything, from head injury to epilepsy to "perinatal encephalopathy" (which, for the uninitiated, is the state of a baby who was born as a result of a prolonged labour, esp if s/he needed resus at birth, however minimal). My 4 yo niece was put on it as the doctor was concerned that she was "withdrawn" (she is not exactly a gregarious person, but I would not dream of treating her with anything, much less piracetam. Her social development is completely normal and appropriate for her age). When I was practising medicine in that country, I saw it being used in epileptics, in people who have suffered strokes, in the depressed, in those with head injury... I cannot comment how effective the treatment was, as EVERYONE was on it, so there was no comparison group as such. My attengings were never able to give me a good reason for its use (such as an RCT citation, for example), other than the fact that "they know it works". Needless to say, I was not very impressed with the reason. I also do not quite understand Piracetam's mechanism of action on cell/molecular level. I have never seen it used in the UK. I know docs in my country of origin and Eastern European countries in general are very much prone to polypharmacy, hand-waving, etc. My opinion: if there were good evidence that Piracetam works beyond placebo effect (and there should be by now, considering the drug is 30 year old), the UK medics (who are very much EBM-oriented) would have been using it. I am slightly embarrassed to say that I did not go out of my way to investigate whether there have been any good studies assessing Piracetam's efficacy in treatment of various conditions.
Sorry, this is not very helpful. As a side note: more than half of my class in medical school were taking piracetam for a good half year before the finals, "to improve memory". I have always been very careful about my brain, and as i did not understand its mechanism of action, I decided against taking any piracetam (I have a good thing going already, thank you - why risk screwing it up?). The result? I graduated at the top of my class.
