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.”