Posts tagged brain injury
Articles and news from the latest research reports.
FOOTBALL teams of the future — even high school squads on limited budgets — may someday have a new tool to check players for brain injuries. It’s a special form of headgear, packed with sensors that read the brain waves of athletes after they come off the field, thus detecting changes caused by the trauma of hard knocks.
The compact, portable sensors decipher neural activity by measuring changes in the brain’s tiny magnetic field. These small magnetometers — still in the laboratory and in prototype — have yet to be tried on athletes. But their potential is enormous for brain imaging and for inexpensive monitoring of brain diseases, as well as for many other applications like the control of prosthetics, said Dr. José Luis Contreras-Vidal, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Houston.
New drug could treat Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis and brain injury
July 24, 2012
A new class of drug developed at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine shows early promise of being a one-size-fits-all therapy for Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis and traumatic brain injury by reducing inflammation in the brain.
Northwestern has recently been issued patents to cover this new drug class and has licensed the commercial development to a biotech company that has recently completed the first human Phase 1 clinical trial for the drug.
The drugs in this class target a particular type of brain inflammation, which is a common denominator in these neurological diseases and in traumatic brain injury and stroke. This brain inflammation, also called neuroinflammation, is increasingly believed to play a major role in the progressive damage characteristic of these chronic diseases and brain injuries.
By addressing brain inflammation, the new class of drugs — represented by MW151 and MW189 — offers an entirely different therapeutic approach to Alzheimer’s than current ones being tested to prevent the development of beta amyloid plaques in the brain. The plaques are an indicator of the disease but not a proven cause.
A new preclinical study published today in the Journal of Neuroscience, reports that when one of the new Northwestern drugs is given to a mouse genetically engineered to develop Alzheimer’s, it prevents the development of the full-blown disease. The study, from Northwestern’s Feinberg School and the University of Kentucky, identifies the optimal therapeutic time window for administering the drug, which is taken orally and easily crosses the blood-brain barrier.
"This could become part of a collection of drugs you could use to prevent the development of Alzheimer’s," said D. Martin Watterson, a professor of molecular pharmacology and biological chemistry at the Feinberg School, whose lab developed the drug. He is a coauthor of the study.
In previous animal studies, the same drug reduced the neurological damage caused by closed-head traumatic brain injury and inhibited the development of a multiple sclerosis-like disease. In these diseases as well as in Alzheimer’s, the studies show the therapy time window is critical.
Recovery from pediatric brain injury a lifelong process, experts say
July 9, 2012
In the last ten years, a new understanding of pediatric brain injury and recovery has emerged. Professionals now understand that recovery may be a lifelong process for the child’s entire circle of family, friends, and healthcare providers. The latest efforts to advance medical and rehabilitative services to move children from medical care and rehabilitation to community reintegration are discussed by the leading experts in a recently published special issue of NeuroRehabilitation.
“Recovery extends well beyond the technical period of rehabilitation,” say guest editors and noted authorities Peter D. Patrick, PhD, MS, Associate Professor Emeritus of the University of Virginia School of Medicine in Charlottesville, and Ronald C. Savage, EdD, Chairman, North American Brain Injury Society and International Pediatric Brain Injury Society. “Children, adolescents, and families struggle to regain the momentum of their life so as to reduce problems, increase opportunity, and support increased participation in work, play, home, and relationships.”
Neural plasticity introduces unknown challenges in the care of the recovering brain, and the issue addresses the most challenging and demanding medical conditions that children may confront following severe brain injury. However, children do most of their recovery at home, in school, and in the community, beyond medical surveillance. “Family-centered” approaches to developing interventions are emerging. For example, Dr. Damith T. Woods and colleagues report on a novel telephone support program to help parents manage challenging behavior associated with brain injury.
Children and adolescents with brain injuries have difficulty adjusting to their injuries and altered abilities, and frequently suffer from low self-esteem and loss of confidence. A study by Carol A. Hawley finds that children with traumatic brain injury have significantly lower self-esteem than normal children, and recommends that rehabilitation strategies promote a sense of self-worth.
Re-entry into school is a major milestone of recovery and the issue highlights a number of efforts to help children improve and return to a positive developmental trajectory. An article by Beth Wicks describes an innovative program in Britain that looks at “education as rehabilitation,” translating successful adult vocational programs into educational rehabilitation programs for children. Lucia Willadino Braga and colleagues report on a program based on cooperative learning that helped preadolescents with acquired brain injury develop metacognitive strategies and improve self-concept, thereby helping empower the preadolescents in their social relationships.
"Over the years and in multiple places around the world, innovative and creative efforts have slowly revealed effective interventions for recovery," comment Dr. Patrick and Dr. Savage. "Increasingly the interventions are evidence-based. This issue is a contribution to the effort to improve outcomes for children and families."
Provided by IOS Press
Source: medicalxpress.com