Thread by @MountSinaiRehab

If you care about Traumatic Brain Injury, read this:

2.5 million people in the United States sustain a traumatic brain injury (TBI) each year.

@CDCgov

TBI has been regarded as one of the strongest environmental risk factors for #dementia, and for #AlzheimersDisease in particular.

The long-term effects of TBIs are of increasing public health importance as the U.S. population ages.

While understanding the long-term implications of TBI is of critical importance, very little is actually known about the clinical & pathological signatures of post-TBI neurodegeneration or its overlap with #AlzheimersDisease & related dementias.

@DamsOConnor of @SinaiTBI

Researchers from @SinaiTBI have been awarded $8.3 million from the @NIH

They will investigate the clinical & biological features that distinguish chronic, static effects of traumatic brain injury from those associated with progressive, post-traumatic neurodegeneration.

Through this new grant, researchers from @SinaiTBI will leverage existing @NIH funded research infrastructure to define the risk factors and clinical and biological signatures of post-traumatic neurodegeneration...

They'll also be able to create rich data resources to share with the scientific community. #TBI

Specific aims of this research project include:

Identifying head trauma exposure thresholds associated with post-traumatic neurodegeneration risk.

Many people sustain a #TBI and recover completely, with no long-term consequences;

Others experience a progressive decline over time.

It is not known what patterns or types of TBI exposure may initiate or accelerate a neurodegenerative process.

Examining post-traumatic neurodegeneration in a life course framework to elucidate early life environmental factors associated with risk and resilience.

TBI is just one of many things a person may experience that can increase the risk for dementia. Early-life stressors, trauma, and pre-injury health conditions can all influence the risk for post-TBI decline.

Identifying fluid and imaging biomarkers to define the underlying pathology(ies) of post-traumatic neurodegeneration.

Clinical measures developed using advanced psychometric methods are capable of detecting even subtle changes in cognition and neurobehavioral function.

By collecting longitudinal MRI scans and blood draws concurrently with these clinical measures, quantifying biological markers that change in parallel to these clinical metrics can shed light on pathological processes that may be driving the clinical decline.

Seeking post-mortem validation of the in vivo biomarkers of post-traumatic neurodegeneration in the LETBI autopsy cohort. The gold standard for diagnosing neurodegenerative disease is brain autopsy.

In this prospective brain donor program, any candidate biological markers identified during life can be validated in postmortem brain tissue.

“The implications of TBI for Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias are of great public concern, and more research is needed,” said @DamsOConnor

“Our strong, interdisciplinary team is ideally positioned to take on this challenge." @SinaiTBI

Find the full press release here: mountsinai.org/about/newsroom…