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Withdrawn Phase 2 Interventional

Ibuprofen Versus Acetaminophen for Treatment of Mild Traumatic Brain Injury

ClinicalTrials.gov ID: NCT02443142

Public ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT02443142. Field values are reproduced from the official study page; the official ClinicalTrials.gov record remains the source of truth for eligibility, enrollment, and contact information.

ClinicalTrials.gov public records Last synced Sep 8, 2026, 10:59 PM EDT

Data is sourced from official ClinicalTrials.gov public API records. Always review the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for the latest information.

Brief summary

Reproduced verbatim from the official ClinicalTrials.gov record. Not medical advice.

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is an important public health problem with an estimated 1.7 million new cases in the United States each year. Although the vast majority of these victims sustain mild TBI, many still develop headache, difficulty concentrating, and decreased memory with potential for serious long-term consequences. In particular, mild TBI is an important consequence of combat-related injuries sustained by military personnel and sports-related injuries in young adults. Unfortunately, treatment of mild TBI is usually limited to oral analgesics for headache pain such as acetaminophen (Tylenol) or ibuprofen (Motrin or Advil). Since there are no previous randomized trials of these medications for mild TBI, their comparative effectiveness is not known. Increasing animal based evidence suggests that mild TBI is related to brain cell injury caused by overexpression of a cellular enzyme (COX-2) that causes neuroinflammation. Fortunately, inhibition of COX-2 is easily achieved using ibuprofen. We hypothesize that head injured patients treated with ibuprofen will have a lower incidence of mild TBI symptoms than patients treated with acetaminophen. We will conduct a randomized clinical trial to measure the comparative effects of ibuprofen versus acetaminophen on the incidence of specific symptoms of mild TBI in emergency department patients with head injury.

Study identification

NCT ID
NCT02443142
Recruitment status
Withdrawn
Study type
Interventional
Phase
Phase 2
Lead sponsor
Northwestern University
Other
Enrollment
Not listed

Conditions and interventions

Interventions

Drug

Eligibility (public fields only)

Age range
21 Years to 60 Years
Sex
All
Healthy volunteers
Healthy volunteers not accepted

This page does not interpret eligibility. Detailed inclusion and exclusion criteria are on the official ClinicalTrials.gov record.

Study timeline

Start date
Apr 30, 2015
Primary completion
Jun 30, 2016
Completion
Jun 30, 2016
Last update posted
Nov 12, 2020

2015 – 2016

United States locations

U.S. sites
1
U.S. states
1
U.S. cities
1
Facility City State ZIP Site status
Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine Chicago Illinois 60045

Site contact phone numbers, emails, and investigator names are intentionally not displayed here. Open the official ClinicalTrials.gov record for site contact information.

About this trial record page

What this page shows
Public field values for ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT02443142, including study identification, conditions, interventions, eligibility (age, sex, healthy volunteer), timeline, and U.S. site list.
What this page does not do
No medical advice, eligibility judgments, treatment recommendations, study quality scoring, or AI-generated medical summaries. No site contact phone numbers, emails, or investigator names.
Where the data comes from
Sourced from the official ClinicalTrials.gov public API. The official record is the source of truth.
Last refresh
Last update posted Nov 12, 2020 · Synced Sep 8, 2026

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Open the official record

The complete protocol, eligibility criteria, and contact information for NCT02443142 live on ClinicalTrials.gov.

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