Health Day News, March 13, 2007 A dose of the prescription sleep aid had the opposite effect on one French woman, awakening her from a two-year coma. The 48-year-old woman suffered from akinetic mutism -- a sort of persistent coma in which the patient is alert but can neither speak nor move. She had lain in this state after sustaining damage to the frontal lobe of her brain. But one day she was given zolpidem (Ambien) to treat ongoing insomnia. "Twenty minutes later, her family noticed surprising signs of enhanced arousal," the study authors wrote. "She became able to communicate to her family, to eat without swallowing troubles, and to move alone in her bed. These effects started 20 minutes after drug administration and lasted for two to three hours." Dr. Tetsuo Ashizawa, professor and chairman of the department of neurology at the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, called the report "interesting." But he cautioned against using such a single-patient study as a basis for treating other, seemingly similar cases. "I understand the desire of the family member to give Ambien to patients" as a result of this study, he said, "but I would not tell them that they should expect improvement. As a physician, I would say this worked in this lady but it may not work in your father or mother, so they should not have unreal expectations. If it works, okay, but if it doesn't, don't be disappointed."