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TBI in the NewsBrainline News FeedShould Teen Football Players Be Tested for Alzheimer's Gene?Should high school kids get a genetic test for the risk for Alzheimer’s disease before they’re allowed to play football? Two prominent scientists who study both Alzheimer’s and the traumatic brain injury suffered by some football players raise that ethically charged question in an editorial out Wednesday in the journal Science Translational Medicine. We all carry a gene called APOE which comes in three forms. If we carry one copy of the form called E4, it triples our lifetime risk for Alzheimer’s. About 10 percent of the U.S. population falls in that category. If we have two copies of E4, the lifetime Alzheimer’s risk is 15 times greater. About 2 percent of us have that genetic makeup. It's easy enough to understand the ghastly accident that befell poor Phineas Gage in Cavendish, Vermont on Sept. 13, 1848: the 25-year-old railroad worker was using an iron rod to tamp down blasting powder when the stuff exploded, sending the 43-inch-long, 13-pound rod through his left cheek and out the top of his head. What's not so easy to understand is why Gage survived the accident--or the precise reason for the dramatic change in his personality afterward. John Harlow, the doctor who treated the once-affable Gage, wrote that he "could not stick to plans, uttered 'the grossest profanity' and showed 'little deference for his fellows,'" Smithsonian magazine reported in 2010. Scientists who have studied a degenerative brain disease in athletes have found the same condition in combat veterans exposed to roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan, concluding that such explosions injure the brain in ways strikingly similar to tackles and punches. The researchers also discovered what they believe is the mechanism by which explosions damage brain tissue and trigger the wasting disease, called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E., by studying simulated explosions on mice. The animals developed evidence of the disease just two weeks after exposure to a single simulated blast, researchers found. Army leaders are launching a sweeping, independent review of how the service evaluates soldiers with possible post-traumatic stress disorder following recent complaints that some PTSD diagnoses were improperly overturned. The Army said Wednesday it will review the diagnoses at all of its medical facilities going back to October 2001. And top Army leaders said they will develop a plan to correct any decisions or policies necessary to make sure that soldiers are receiving the care and treatment they deserve. Let’s start with what we don’t know. We don’t know if Junior Seau suffered from Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, a disease that causes depression, mood swings, and erratic behavior in those who have suffered multiple concussions. We don’t even know for sure if Seau suffered from multiple concussions. His ex-wife thinks there might have been many. A former teammate guesses as many as 1,500. If Seau’s family allows his brain to be studied, as some organizations are reporting they have, we don’t know what the results will be… or if the family will even choose to share the results with the public. This spring, girls’ lacrosse players across the country will take to the field in what some have called “the fastest sport on two feet.” To help keep these players safe from injury, Mason researcher Shane Caswell embarked on a new study that used video analysis to take a closer look at the common interactions of the game that lead to head injuries, such as concussions or contusions, in high school girls’ lacrosse players. Published online ahead of print in the American Journal of Sports Medicine, the study finds that most head injuries result from stick-to-head contact during aggressive play near the goal at the varsity level. In addition, the researchers determined that most of these head injuries resulted from unintentional stick contact, which suggests that head injury in girls’ lacrosse may be an indirect consequence of play, in which players position themselves in hazardous situations either purposefully or inadvertently. Female and younger athletes show more symptoms of a concussion, and take longer to recover from its effects, a U.S. study has found. The research, out of Michigan State University, suggests that physicians and athletic trainers should now take both age and sex into account when dealing with an athlete who has suffered a brain injury. Ian Dawe, physician-in-chief at Ontario Shores Centre for Mental Health Sciences, in Whitby, Ont., said the study findings concur with what he and other Canadian experts in concussion and traumatic brain injury are seeing. “Women tend to have a higher mortality rate following a severe traumatic brain injury than men,” Dawe said Friday. “Outcomes do seem worse and recovery seems to be longer from those severe injuries. It wouldn’t be a stretch to look at concussions and see a similar pattern.” It's been six years, and sometimes Bob Woodruff's brain still doesn't allow him to find the words. The famed ABC broadcaster — the one-time anchor who was nearly killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq in 2006 — recently broadcast live from the John Edwards trial. Appearing on “Good Morning America,” he stood outside the courthouse, looked into the camera and tried to say that one of the trial's witnesses “went in and testified.” Instead he said this: “He went in and terrified.” Such are the dangers of going on live TV while still recovering from a severe brain injury that affects memory and word recognition. When ex-NFL star Junior Seau took a shotgun to his sternum last week, commentators called it a "sobering wake-up call" for the league. How could a never-say-die athlete, a proven winner on the field, give up his own life? My Slate colleague Josh Levin wondered whether this latest football suicide would finally change the way we think about the consequences of repeated head trauma. That wake-up call may have arrived Wednesday morning. News outlets (including this one) have suddenly became aware of some surprising and important CDC research published in January in the American Journal of Cardiology. At the request of the NFL Players Association, government scientists compared the death rates for almost 3,500 of the league's retirees to those for age- and race-matched non-athletes over the same years. The football players had much longer lives: Just 334 of them had passed away, compared with an expected total of 625. More than 1.6 million Americans suffer a sports-related concussion every year, and a growing number occur among high school and college athletes. According to federal statistics, more than 150,000 teenage athletes sustained concussions on the playing field from 2001 to 2005, though that figure accounts for only those who were taken to emergency rooms, so the true number, experts say, is likely to be much higher. While researchers have known that girls run a greater risk of suffering concussions than boys playing the same sports, a new study is among the first to look at the effect of both age and sex on a range of symptoms. Acupuncture Helps Brain Injury-Related Sleep Issues Medication and acupuncture both help with sleep issues after brain injury but acupuncture has fewer side effects. Supporting the physical and emotional well-being of the person with TBI and the caregiver will ultimately help the whole family. Veterans with traumatic brain injury are sustaining new, nonfatal injuries after being discharged from inpatient care. This study showed that online calendars help with memory — as a tool and as a therapy. What is the most effective way to track recovery from concussions in athletes? More than half of people with TBI use Facebook to create and maintain friendships. Goal-directed OT can help people after brain injury. Learn why it's better to "plan" than "avoid" after a brain injury. Learn the risk factors for heterotopic ossification. |
