The Canadian Maraviroc Randomized Controlled Trial To Augment Rehabilitation Outcomes After Stroke

After stroke, the combination of progressive skills practice in an adequate dose plus exercise for fitness augments motor and cognitive outcomes. However, sensorimotor and cognitive improvements often plateau after 12 weeks. There is an urgent need to find novel methods to drive recovery and lessen limb paralysis. Drugs that might enhance learning or neural repair, as well as other molecular and synaptic adaptations that occur during skills training and fitness exercise, might extend that recovery curve, although to date only fluoxetine has given any hint of this. Most trials have tested agents that modulate neurotransmitters. Several very recent preclinical experiments and observational studies in patients after stroke suggest that the commercially available medication, Maraviroc, may augment skills learning during rehabilitation training especially during the first three months after onset, by acting on unique molecular components for novel learning.

The CAMAROS trial is a randomized, placebo-controlled, blinded phase II trial evaluating the efficacy of coupling Maraviroc (Celsentri) with exercise rehabilitation across multiple Canadian sites in 120 stroke participants. Patients will begin their participation within 8 weeks of stroke onset. Both groups will receive an exercise program in addition to standard of care rehabilitation, but only one group (the intervention group) will receive the active drug Maraviroc.

Study participants will be evaluated using physical assessments, cognitive assessments, and using wrist and ankle activity sensors at baseline, after 4 weeks of taking the drug/placebo, after 8 weeks of taking the drug/placebo, and at 6-months post-stroke. While enrolled in the study, participants will be required to take part in an 8 week, daily exercise program. Participants will also perform a short motor learning assessment at each formal assessment and again within 72 hours of each formal assessment (initial test and retention test).

Evaluators and participants will be blind to the treatment administered. The trial is constructed with randomization to remove selection and allocation biases and to ensure greater validity in observed differences in the outcome measures.