New Study Shows that Brain Injury May Accelerate Aging
A new study published in the Annals of Neurology – the official journal of the American Neurological Association – adds further evidence in support of our growing understanding that TBI, especially moderate/severe TBI or repetitive mild TBI, often triggers a “progressive neurodegenerative process” that accelerates over time. As discussed in prior posts, TBI is now conceptualized as potentially a chronic disease triggered by injury, not as an isolated event. Hopefully this understanding will lead in the future to interventions designed to halt or slow the disease process.
The recent study, published in the April 2015 issue, reports on the results of research at the Imperial College London, where brain scans of over 1500 healthy people were analyzed to develop a computer program that could predict a person’s age from their brain scan. The program was then used to estimate the “brain age” of 113 more healthy people and 99 people who had suffered TBIs. The brains of the TBI patients were on average five years older than their real age would predict. Read More