Researchers at the Vanderbilt Sports Concussion Center (VSCC) are using novel sound wave technology as part of an attempt to more rapidly and accurately diagnose sports concussions on the sidelines during games.
A new animal study shows that traumatic brain injury (TBI) affects the body as well as the brain and that treatment with hypertension drugs blocks the production of proteins related to inflammation.
A prospective longitudinal study of U.S. Marines suggests that reduced heart rate variability – the changing time interval between heartbeats – may be a contributing risk factor for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The findings are reported in the September 9 online issue of JAMA Psychiatry by researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System.
Researchers at the NYU Langone Concussion Center reviewed studies that involved athletes who sustained a concussion during sporting activities and found the vision test, known as the King-Devick test, was 86 percent sensitive in detecting whether a concussion had occurred, as confirmed by clinical diagnosis. When combined with rapid assessments of balance and cognition, the testing battery was able to detect 100 percent of concussions that occurred among athletes in the studies that measured this outcome.
Researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center have found how even brief exposure to sudden sounds or mild trauma can form permanent, long-term brain connections, or memories, in a specific region of the brain. Moreover, the research team, working with rats, says it was able to chemically stimulate those biological pathways in the locus coeruleus — the area of the brain best known for releasing the “fight or flight” hormone noradrenaline — to heighten and improve the animals’ hearing.
A Vanderbilt patient who survived the unthinkable has brought a whole new meaning to the term “butt dialing” and believes that prayer, along with a little help from Siri, saved his life.
A bomb blast or a rough tackle can inflict serious brain damage. Yet at the time of impact, these injuries are often invisible. To detect head trauma immediately, a team of researchers has developed a polymer-based material that changes colors depending on how hard it is hit. The goal is to someday incorporate this material into protective headgear. They will describe their approach at the 250th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society.
Despite growing concerns about concussions, the NCAA has not regulated full-contact football practices, arguing that there’s insufficient data available about head impacts. A new study from the University of Virginia School of Medicine begins to address that lack of data, detailing the number and severity of subconcussive head impacts over the course of an entire season. The researchers conclude that the NCAA’s lack of regulation comes at a cost to college players that seems “unnecessarily high” and call for changes to reduce head impacts.
Researchers at the University of Virginia (UVa) examined the number and severity of subconcussive head impacts sustained by college football players over an entire season during practices and games. The researchers found that the number of head impacts varied depending on the intensity of the activity.
A new blood test could help emergency room doctors quickly diagnose traumatic brain injury and determine its severity. The findings, published July 10 in the Journal of Neurotrauma, could help identify patients who might benefit from extra therapy or experimental treatments.
Battlefield surgeons and civilian physicians could have a powerful new tool to help patients recover from traumatic injuries, including life-threatening wounds from explosions.
A highly specialized procedure that lengthens bones can prevent the need for amputations in selected patients who have suffered severe fractures.
And now a new study has found that an alternative limb-lengthening technique makes the long recovery process less cumbersome -- while still providing good-to-excellent outcomes.
New research by investigators at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center provides the first direct evidence linking traumatic brain injury to Alzheimer's disease and chronic traumatic encephalopathy -- and offers the potential for early intervention to prevent the development of these debilitating neurodegenerative diseases.
Why do some youngsters bounce back quickly from a traumatic brain injury, while others suffer for years? New UCLA/USC research suggests that damage to the coating around the brain’s nerve fibers--not injury severity-- may explain the difference.
Benzodiazepine drugs are widely used in patients with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but available evidence suggests that they are not effective—and may even be harmful, concludes a systematic review and meta-analysis in the July Journal of Psychiatric Practice. The journal is published by Wolters Kluwer.
A PLOS ONE study has found that burn patients experience dramatic changes in the 100 trillion bacteria inside the gastrointestinal tract.There was an increase in potentially harmful bacteria, and decrease in beneficial bacteria. The findings suggest that burn patients might benefit from treatment with probiotics.
Researchers from Vienna examined elderly patients and adult patients receiving antiplatelet therapy who had presented with mild head injury to see if S100B protein levels could help identify whether intracranial bleeding was present. The researchers found that patients with serum S100B levels < 0.105 µg/L were very unlikely to have intracranial hemorrhage.
NIBIB-supported researchers have created tiny gel particles that can perform the same essential functions as platelets. The particles could one day be used to control excessive bleeding following traumatic injury or in individuals with impaired clotting due to an inherited condition or as a result of certain medications or chemotherapy.
Chronic disease and mental health issues disproportionately affect low-income African-Americans, Latinos and Hispanics. Researchers at UCLA have developed a screening tool that may provide better treatment.
During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, US combat support hospitals treated at least 650 children with severe, combat-related head injuries, according to a special article in the July issue of Neurosurgery, official journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons. The journal is published by Wolters Kluwer.
Researchers investigated mannitol use before and during transportation of patients with intracranial emergencies from peripheral hospitals to tertiary facilities that house neurosurgery departments. The authors found a 22% dosing error rate, with slightly more patients receiving a dose smaller, rather than larger, than the dose range recommended by the Brain Trauma Foundation.
The well-known "fight or flight" response is part of the inborn series of defense/fear responses activated in reaction to threats. Understanding the steps of the defense cascade can help in forming effective treatments for patients dealing with persistent aftereffects of trauma, according to a review in the Harvard Review of Psychiatry. The journal is published by Wolters Kluwer.
The 50 hospitals in the United States with the highest markup of prices over their actual costs are charging out-of-network patients and the uninsured, as well as auto and workers’ compensation insurers, more than 10 times the costs allowed by Medicare, new research suggests. It’s a markup of more than 1,000 percent for the same medical services.
The use of cell therapy after traumatic brain injury (TBI) in children can reduce the amount of therapeutic interventions needed to treat the patient, as well as the amount of time the child spends in neurointensive care, according to research by The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) Medical School.
After a concussion, a person can have disturbed sleep, memory deficits and other problems for years, but a new study suggests that despite these, sleep still helps them to overcome memory deficits, and the benefit is equal to that seen in individuals with no history of mild traumatic brain injury.
About one-third of patients admitted to an intensive care unit (ICU) will develop delirium, a condition that lengthens hospital stays and substantially increases one’s risk of dying in the hospital, according to a new study led by Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers appearing in the British Medical Journal.
After reviewing outcomes from thousands of cases, researchers at Johns Hopkins report that patients with blocked neck arteries who undergo carotid stenting to prop open the narrowed blood vessels fare decidedly worse if their surgeons re-inflate a tiny balloon in the vessel after the mesh stent is in place.
An article in the June 2015 issue of Critical Care Nurse reviews post-acute transitional care as provided at a skilled nursing facility in western New York and examines the individual roles of various interdisciplinary team members, including progressive care nurses.
Sojourner Center, one of the largest and longest running domestic violence shelters in the United States, announced plans to develop the first world-class program dedicated to the analysis and treatment of traumatic brain injury (TBI) in women and children living with domestic violence, a largely unrecognized public health issue.
In the first study of its kind, former National Football League (NFL) players who lost consciousness due to concussion during their playing days showed key differences in brain structure later in life.
The tendency for veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder to lash out in anger can be significantly amplified if they are also depressed, according to research led by Ray Novaco, UC Irvine professor of psychology & social behavior, and published this week by the American Psychological Association.
The results of three brain autopsies announced this week by the Krembil Neuroscience Centre’s Canadian Sports Concussion Project (CSCP) show the varying outcomes that can result in brains of former athletes who sustained multiple concussions.
Ongoing efforts by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to reduce the population impact of traumatic brain injury (TBI) are documented in the May/June issue of The Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation, official journal of the Brain Injury Association of America. The journal is published by Wolters Kluwer.
Writing in the May 7 online issue of American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System suggest that people with PTSD may also be at risk for accelerated aging or premature senescence.
Trending news releases with the most views in a single day. Topics include: WWII and PTSD, stem cells, cancer, racial segregation, supplements and glaucoma, medical research, cybersecurity, vision research, and physics.
Researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine report a previously unappreciated phenomenon in which the location of injury to a neuron’s communication wire in the spinal cord — the axon — determines whether the neuron simply stabilizes or attempts to regenerate. The study, published April 30 by Neuron, demonstrates how advances in live-imaging techniques are revealing new insights into the body’s ability to respond to spinal cord injuries.
Researchers at the University of Kentucky’s Sanders-Brown Center on Aging have been attempting to understand the cascade of events following mild head injury that may lead to an increased risk for developing a progressive degenerative brain disease, and their new study, which was published in the current issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, shows initial promise for a treatment that might interrupt the process that links the two conditions.
Karina Valencia needed more hope than the physicians and staff could muster shortly after her son’s shooting, the near-death victim of a convenience store robbery. Luckily, she got the hope she needed, and more, from a peer support group set up for family and friends of hospitalized intensive care patients. In particular, was the story shared by group leader Michael Segal, a patient advocate at Harris Health System's Ben Taub Hospital—himself the victim and survivor of a convenience store shooting.
An expert can speak on how treating sleep problems might reduce the potential of PTSD among military personnel. Seth Lederman, MD, co-founder and CEO of Tonix Pharmaceuticals Holding Corp., is overseeing the development of TNX-102 SL, an advanced sublingual reformulation of the FDA-approved muscle relaxant cyclobenzaprine, aiming to improve sleep quality and make a meaningful difference in the symptoms experienced by PTSD patients. Tonix’s AtEase Study is a Phase 2 clinical study to evaluate the potential therapeutic benefits of TNX-102 SL for PTSD in members of the military and its veterans.
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) allowed millions of young adults to retain health care coverage through their parents’ insurance plans, but new research finds that many young African-American and Hispanic adults who need coverage for trauma care may not get it.
A new UCLA study takes another step toward the early understanding of a degenerative brain condition called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, which affects athletes in contact sports who are exposed to repetitive brain injuries. Using a new imaging tool, researchers found a strikingly similar pattern of abnormal protein deposits in the brains of retired NFL players who suffered from concussions.
Roughly 8 percent of people in the US suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). SSRIs, such as Zoloft and Paxil, are the only currently-approved therapy, but their effectiveness is marginal. LSU researchers have found that blueberries could be an effective treatment. Research will be presented at the 2015 Experimental Biology Meeting on Monday, 3/30.
A team of Penn Medicine orthopedic surgeons has found that modern technology for healing distal femur fractures is as safe and effective as its more established alternative, without a potential shortfall of the older approach. . The findings are being presented on Thursday, March 26, 2015, at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Annual Meeting in Las Vegas.
A sympathetic nerve block that has shown promise for treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) performed no better than sham treatment in a randomized controlled trial, new research shows.
Innovative angles of attack in research that focus on how the human brain protects and repairs itself will help develop treatments for one of the most common, costly, deadly and scientifically frustrating medical conditions worldwide: traumatic brain injury.
Decreased ability to identify specific odors can predict abnormal neuroimaging results in blast-injured troops, according to a new study by Federal researchers released online in the journal “Neurology,” March 18, 2015.