Chiari Connection International

Chiari Connection International

 
Brain Injury Article
Understanding the Abstract
By: Sandy Rodgers, Educational Therapist
For: Chiari Connection International
August 15, 2014

The following abstract, quoted below, is from ScienceDirect. It's from an article newly published in the journal Neurobiology of Disease, that explains how the timing of a repeat brain injury negatively affects the outcome.

Brains need considerable time to heal after an injury. They must be protected from repeat injury during the healing time, or suffer greater damage.

We can use this information to support the placement of lengthy restrictions on certain kinds of physical activities of symptomatic and post-op Chiarians, especially those who want to participate in dangerous hobbies or contact sports. Parents seeking guidance for their children can apply this information, too.


ScienceDirect
Neurobiology of Disease
October 2014, Vol.70:108–116, doi:10.1016/j.nbd.2014.06.016

To print the article please click below:
Brain Injury Article From ScienceDirect

Injury timing alters metabolic, inflammatory and functional outcomes following repeated mild traumatic brain injury
Zachary M. Weil, Kristopher R. Gaier, Kate Karelina

Highlights

  • Repeated traumatic brain injuries can produce devastating results.
  • Repeated injuries close together in time worsen functional and metabolic outcomes.
  • Enhanced vulnerability may be mediated by impaired brain energy metabolism.
Abstract:

Repeated head injuries are a major public health concern both for athletes, and members of the police and armed forces. There is ample experimental and clinical evidence that there is a period of enhanced vulnerability to subsequent injury following head trauma. Injuries that occur close together in time produce greater cognitive, histological, and behavioral impairments than do injuries separated by a longer period.

Traumatic brain injuries alter cerebral glucose metabolism and the resolution of altered glucose metabolism may signal the end of the period of greater vulnerability.

Here, we injured mice either once or twice separated by three or 20 days.

Repeated injuries that were separated by three days were associated with greater axonal degeneration, enhanced inflammatory responses, and poorer performance in a spatial learning and memory task.

A single injury induced a transient but marked increase in local cerebral glucose utilization in the injured hippocampus and sensorimotor cortex, whereas a second injury, three days after the first, failed to induce an increase in glucose utilization at the same time point.

In contrast, when the second injury occurred substantially later (20 days after the first injury), an increase in glucose utilization occurred that paralleled the increase observed following a single injury.

The increased glucose utilization observed after a single injury appears to be an adaptive component of recovery, while mice with 2 injuries separated by three days were not able to mount this response, thus this second injury may have produced a significant energetic crisis such that energetic demands outstripped the ability of the damaged cells to utilize energy.

These data strongly reinforce the idea that too rapid return to activity after a traumatic brain injury can induce permanent damage and disability, and that monitoring cerebral energy utilization may be a tool to determine when it is safe to return to the activity that caused the initial injury.

Corresponding author at: Biomedical Research Tower #618, 460 West 12th Ave., Columbus, OH, USA.

Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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