Help an SCI Survivor Win an Accessible Van

 

In 2007, Tony Dowels, a sophomore at Riverview High School, was a great athlete both on the football field and the track. However, while driving home from a track meet in April of that year, Tony’s life was forever changed.

Tony was involved in a car accident after nodding off behind the wheel and was trapped inside his car under a semitrailer for two hours. Tony survived a broken neck and sustained a C5 spinal cord injury. Doctors said he was lucky to be alive.

After the accident, Tony was determined to live  his life to the fullest. And, from that point on, his new journey began. He spent months in rehabilitation and, with his positive attitude, determination and support of his family, Tony regained control. He graduated with honors from Riverview High School and earned an academic scholarship to attend the University of Florida.

Although he faced several medical challenges during his first few semesters as an undergraduate, Tony is looking forward to graduating with his B.S. in Sports Management. During his time at UF, his optimism and encouraging spirit has served as an inspiration to many people on campus, including the Gator football team. Throughout his college years, Tony has become a regular on the sidelines during practice and became good friends with former UF quarterback Tim Tebow and other members of the team. 

This fall, Tony will take the final step towards attaining his degree as an intern with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. However, he needs your help. In order to get to and from his internship, Tony is hoping to win an accessible van.  With everything that he has overcome and all of the goals he has accomplished, Tony certainly deserves this.

So we’re asking all of you to visit www.mobilityawarenessmonth.com/entrant/antonio-dowels-tampa-fl/ and cast your vote to help Tony win!  Every vote counts and winning this will make a HUGE difference in this remarkable young man’s life.

TBI: Why is it important to understand it?

Unless it’s happened to you or someone you know, you may not fully comprehend traumatic brain injury, but understanding TBI is critical because it is an important public health problem, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  TBI is an injury to the brain caused by trauma, not disease. It may be caused by a bump, blow or jolt to the head that disrupts the normal function of the brain. 

Common causes are gunshots, car crashes, assaults or slip and fall accidents. Severity may range from a mild TBI, which causes a brief change in mental status to a severe TBI, leading to an extended period of unconsciousness or amnesia. Severe injuries increase the risk of a greater number of and more severe complications.

According to staff at the Mayo Clinic, some people with TBI may experience seizures within the first week. Some serious TBI’s may result in recurring seizures, called post-traumatic epilepsy. Some people who have had TBI may also experience swelling and increased pressure on the brain from cerebrospinal fluid building up in the spaces of the brain called the cerebral ventricles. TBI may also cause a meningitis infection if skull fractures or penetrating wounds tear the layers of protective tissue called meninges that surround the brain. Blood vessel damage may also lead to stroke, blood clots or other problems. Nerve damage from a TBI to the base of the skull that damages nerves that emerge directly from the brain called cranial nerves may result in loss of facial sensation, sense of smell, loss of vision, swallowing problems.

Some of the common problems associated with TBI include changes in thinking (cognitive) skills, communication problems that may lead to frustration, behavioral changes, and emotional changes.
In Florida, approximately 370,000 people are living with a TBI-related disability, a statewide needs and resources assessment shows. By 2015, it is expected to rise to 435,350 people. Well Florida Council: Working Together for Healthy Communities authored the assessment with project partners: Brain Injury Association of Florida, Inc., Florida Department of Health, and Brain and Spinal Cord Injury Program.

Key findings show that children 0-4 years, young adults 15-24 years, and adults 65 years and older are at greatest risk for TBI. Falls were the leading cause of TBI in the state, and they were most common among the youngest and oldest age groups. Motor vehicle accidents were the leading cause of TBI-related deaths.
Resources listed in the assessment include Florida’s Trauma System, access to immediate and long-term rehabilitation and therapy, support groups and support networks, and access to information and resources. But if you have suffered a TBI due to someone else’s negligence, you may need additional legal help.

For more information, please contact a Florida personal injury attorney at (813) 471-4444, or visit
VanguardAttorneys.com.

Could Frequent Soccer Headers Result in Brain Injury?

Though soccer moms often juggle hectic schedules between checking homework, prepping food for the kids, and carpooling kids to games, they should also make time to be aware of the risk for brain injuries.
Researchers are continuing to look into the impact of frequent headers - which refers to when soccer players deliberately hit or field the soccer ball with their head - on the brain, even without concussions.
A new study of a small group of professional soccer players, who had trained since childhood, published in the Nov. 14 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, suggested that frequent headers that did not cause a concussion may still result in changes to the brain’s white matter.
The white matter of the brain contains many nerve fibers. And it is surrounded by a fat called myelin that acts as an insulator and increases the speed of transmission of nerve signals. The myelin gives it the whitish appearance. In comparison to the gray matter, it has been the “long-neglected half of the brain,” according to the Dana Foundation, a New York-based foundation that supports brain research.
“On average, elite male soccer players -- who often use their heads to direct the ball -- had a range of negative changes in white matter architecture compared with a group of competitive swimmers who were unlikely to have repetitive brain trauma,” according to Inga Koerte, MD, of Harvard Medical Schools Psychiatry Neuroimaging Laboratory in Boston, and colleagues, in MedPage Today.
Those differences were observed even though none of the participants in either group had a history of concussion, Koerte and colleagues reported in a research letter in JAMA. Although it is possible that frequent heading of the ball could explain the impairments in the soccer players, "differences in head injury rates, sudden accelerations, or even lifestyle could contribute," the authors wrote.
Two previous brain imaging studies presented last November at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) in Chicago have shown risk for brain injury and cognitive impairment.
Researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University, a research-intensive medical school based in the Bronx, New York, and Montefiore Medical Center, the University Hospital and academic medical center for Einstein, conducted these studies. They used diffusion tensor imaging, an advanced MRI-based imaging technique, on 38 amateur soccer players, who had played the sport since childhood. While analyzing brain images of the most frequent headers during the past year, they found brain injury similar to that seen in patients with concussion, also known as mild traumatic brain injury.
“Our goal was to determine if there is a threshold level for heading frequency that, when surpassed, resulted in detectable brain injury,” said lead author Michael Lipton, M.D., Ph.D., associate director of Einstein’s Gruss Magnetic Resonance Research Center, medical director of MRI services at Montefiore.
Researchers found a threshold level of approximately 1,000 to 1,500 heads per year. Beyond that number of headers, they observed significant injury. “Heading a soccer ball is not an impact of a magnitude that will lacerate nerve fibers in the brain,” said Dr. Lipton in the media release. “But repetitive heading may set off a cascade of responses that can lead to degeneration of brain cells.”
Another study with the same set of 38 amateur soccer players examined neuropsychological function through tests of verbal memory and activities with mind-body coordination such as throwing a ball. The study found that players with the highest annual heading frequency performed worst on these tests.
“These two studies present compelling evidence that brain injury and cognitive impairment can result from heading a soccer ball with high frequency,” Dr. Lipton said. “These are findings that should be taken into consideration in planning future research to develop approaches to protect soccer players.”
Since soccer rules prohibit players from using their hands or arms to direct the ball except for the goal keeper, it doesn’t appear that the practice of heading the ball will be eliminated anytime soon, but additional research may help establish guidelines to limit the practice to a certain threshold of safety.
 

Head injury, pesticides combined may triple risk for Parkinson’s

Though previous studies have linked serious head injury and pesticide exposure to Parkinson’s disease, the combination of both may be an even greater risk, a new study shows.

The study led by researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles is published in the November 13 print issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

“While each of these two factors is associated with an increased risk of Parkinson’s on their own, the combination is associated with greater risk than just adding the two factors together,” said study author Beate Ritz, MD, PhD, UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health, in a media release. “This study suggests that the physiological process that is triggered by a head injury may increase brain cells’ vulnerability to attacks from pesticides that can be toxic to the brain or the other way around, for example, chronic low dose exposure to pesticides may increase the risk of Parkinson’s after a head injury.”

The study involved 357 people who had Parkinson’s disease and 754 people without the disease, all of whom lived in an agricultural area in central California, according to the release.

Researchers asked participants to report any head injuries they had ever received with a loss of consciousness for more than five minutes. They used data on the use of the herbicide called paraquat collected by the state of California’s Pesticide Use Reporting system to determine exposure to the weed killer based on a 500-meter area around their home and work addresses.

From this data, they found that individuals with Parkinson’s were twice as likely to have had a head injury with loss of consciousness for more than five minutes, and that people with Parkinson’s disease were 36 percent more likely to have exposure to paraquat than those who did not have the disease.

The new study doesn’t prove that a traumatic brain injury or pesticide exposure causes the disease. What it shows is that having a head injury along with living near areas where the pesticide called paraquat is used may lead to triple the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease.

As many as one million Americans live with the progressive neurodegenerative disease that may cause tremors in the body - more than the combined number of people diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy and Lou Gehrig’s disease, according to the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation.

"I think all of us are beginning to realize that there's not one smoking gun that causes Parkinson's disease,” Dr. James Bower, a neurologist from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, who wasn't involved in the new research, said in a Nov. 13 article from Reuters Health news wire. "There might be many paths to the ultimate development of Parkinson's disease."

He added that “. . . some people who are genetically predisposed might need just one ‘environmental insult’ - such as a blow to the head - to set them up for Parkinson's. Others who aren't naturally susceptible to the disorder could still develop it after multiple exposures.”

Hope through innovation: Brain-computer interfaces may aid paralyzed individuals

 Study participant Tim Hemmes (right) reaching out to his researcher, Wei Wang, M.D., Ph.D. (left), using a brain-controlled prosthetic arm. Also pictured: Research team member Jennifer L. Collinger, Ph.D. and Katie Schaffer.

Robotic-mind control, popularized in the 2009 epic science fiction film, “Avatar,” may not be as far off as we imagine it to be. Scientists have already been researching brain-computer interfaces [BCI] for years.

 A Nov. 11 article in MIT Technology Review shows that a newly developed carbon microthread may be the kind of long-lasting electrode needed to improve BCI. In preliminary studies, BCI have allowed paralyzed people to control robotic limbs or a computer mouse.

The new microthread, designed at the University of Michigan’s Neural Engineering lab, is only seven micrometers thick, about 100 times thinner than traditional electrodes used to study animal brains.

Andrew Schwartz, a researcher at the University of Pittsburgh who was not involved in the work, said in the article that it’s widely believed small fibers are “a good thing, because they seem to be ‘ignored’ by the brain.” But he also cautioned “that it could be difficult to insert such fine, flexible electrodes into brain tissue, and to secure them,” noting that recordings broke down in many of the animals studied.

Though these innovations are not exactly solid yet, they are breaking new ground, and it’s exciting to think about their potential for people suffering from spinal cord injuries that have left them paralyzed.

Back in 2008, a monkey at the University of Pittsburgh was able to feed himself a marshmallow using his brain to directly control a robotic arm. Since then, this research has expanded to human beings.

A little over a year ago, the Pitt Chronicle of the University of Pittsburgh showed how a BCI impacted 30-year old Tim Hemmes, who had been paralyzed due to a SCI from a motorcycle accident in 2004. With a mind-controlled prosthetic arm, he was able to reach up and touch the hand of his girlfriend, Katie Schaffer, “in a painstaking and tender high five,” the article published on Oct. 17 of last year stated. 

Surgeons placed a grid the size of a stamp on the motor cortex surface of Hemmes’ brain to control a robotic arm for the four-week trial period. The BCI picks up neural activity that can be translated by a computer processor to control computer cursors or assistive devices such as a prosthetic hand.

The research project funded by the National Institutes of Health in early 2011 received Popular Mechanics magazine’s 2012 Breakthrough Award. The magazine honored Hemmes, and the research team led by Wei Wang, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor, Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Pitt School of Medicine, at an invitation-only conference and gala awards ceremony in New York City last month. The project is also featured in the November issue of Popular Mechanics.

Gene required for nerve regeneration identified

Photo Credit: Rolls lab, Penn State University

Scientists at Penn State and Duke University have identified a gene that is associated with the regeneration of injured nerve cells. The journal Cell Reports published an online early copy of their findings on Nov. 1, and will also include the paper in the monthly issue of the journal on Nov. 29. 

The team of researchers found that a mutation in a single gene can entirely shut down the process by which axons – the parts of the nerve cell that are responsible for sending signals to other cells –re-grow themselves after being cut or damaged.

"We are hopeful that this discovery will open the door to new research related to spinal-cord and other neurological disorders in humans," said Melissa Rolls, an assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Penn State, who led the research team, in a Penn State news release. 

“Axons, which form long bundles extending out from nerve cells, ideally survive throughout an animal's lifetime,” Rolls explained. “To be able to survive, nerve cells need to be resilient and, in the event of injury or simple wear and tear, some can repair damage by growing new axons.”

Earlier research suggests that microtubules, intracellular "highways" along which basic building blocks are transported might need to be rebuilt as an important step in this type of repair. "In many ways this idea makes sense,” Rolls said. “In order to grow a new part of a nerve, raw materials will be needed and the microtubule highways will need to be organized to take the new materials to the site of growth.”

Based on this research the team investigated the role of microtubule-remodeling proteins in axon re-growth after injury, focusing on a set of proteins that sever microtubules into small pieces. A protein named spastin emerged to play a critical role.

The team used fruit flies as their model organism to test the role of spastin. They found that in fruit flies with two normal copies of the spastin gene, severed axons were able to regenerate. However, in fruit flies with two or even only one abnormal spastin gene, the severed axons were not able to regenerate.

"Now that we know that spastin plays an important role in axon regeneration and also that this gene is dominant, we have opened up a possible path toward the study of human diseases involving nerve-cell impairment," Rolls said. "In fact, our next step is to probe the link between hereditary spastic paraplegia (HSP) and axon regeneration."
 

Hope through research: New TBI studies uncovered

As of May 2010, the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center counted 178,876 traumatic brain injuries in the U.S. Military since 2000. Though the number of these injuries may seem devastating, scientists working on new discoveries to help prevent, detect, and treat blast injuries provide some hopeful news.

From mice trained to sniff out landmines, to new technology to detect blast injuries, to a dietary supplement derived from tobacco leaves that may help retain memory skills, scientists are finding new ways to combat these injuries. Researchers presented these findings at Neuroscience 2012, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, which was held in New Orleans, Louisiana, last month.

A widely acclaimed program that deployed specially trained rats to sniff out landmines inspired scientists to work on developing a genetic modification of mice, “transgenic mice,” that could increase their capacity to smell landmine explosives by 500 fold. This initiative is part of The MouSensor Project, to build a “biosensor” for landmine detection, which researchers presented at the annual meeting.

Funds from the National Institutes of Health supported this research.

A different study that looked at blast injuries came out of the United Kingdom where around 60 percent of the injuries to soldiers sustained in Afghanistan have been the result of explosive devices.

This study, which looked at the brains of 20 U.K. soldiers recently exposed to a blast, 40 non-blast TBI patients, and 40 age-matched controls, found that blast-related injuries appear more likely than non-blast injuries to damage the back lower region of the brain, which is responsible for motor control and other essential life functions. Since these injuries sustained in the brain’s “white matter,” which helps nerve cells communicate, cannot be accurately detected by conventional magnetic resonance imaging, scientists used an advanced form of MRI, known as diffusion tensor imaging, for this research.

In another study, supported by funds from the Department of Defense and the Roskamp Foundation, based in Sarasota, Florida, scientists found that a dietary supplement may improve spatial memory, which is the part of the memory responsible for recording information about one’s environment.

Fiona Crawford, PhD, the study’s senior author, and her colleagues studied a group of 96 mice, half of which had suffered TBI and half of which had not. Among the injured mice, half received a placebo and half received anatabine, which is an anti-inflammatory dietary supplement derived from tobacco leaves, or an experimental Alzheimer’s drug. After two weeks, the mice that received either the drug or the dietary supplement performed as well as the uninjured mice on a test that evaluates spatial memory.

“These studies are particularly outstanding for how they take some of the most complex and cutting edge science of our time and translate it into practical applications that can have an enormous, visible impact on people’s lives,” said Jane Roskams, PhD, University of British Columbia, an expert on brain repair, in a recent media release. “That one day a mere mouse might save a child from losing a limb while walking across an old mine field, or a simple dietary supplement could make life more bearable for a brain injury victim shows why the field of neuroscience is attracting so much interest these days.”