Researchers receive $6M grant to determine neuropathological condition of head injuries in non-athletes

Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai researchers have been awarded a major federal grant to determine the long-term clinical and neuropathological sequelae of single and repeated head injuries in non-athletes. People sustaining these injuries often develop poor coordination, slurred speech, and other symptoms similar to those seen in Parkinson's disease, along with dementia many years later.

The grant, totaling $6 million over four years, funded by the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, is intended to build a more precise understanding of chronic traumatic encephalopathy and traumatic brain injury in civilians over age 45 during their lifetime.

"The number of people in the community who experience one or more brain injuries is far greater than the number of elite athletes that we hear about," said the study's lead investigator, Wayne Gordon, PhD, Director of the Brain Injury Research Center of Mount Sinai, and Jack Nash Professor, and Vice Chair of the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. "We are enormously grateful to the National Institutes of Health for supporting this research.

With the grant, investigators hope to find a biomarker permitting early diagnosis while people are alive that will help lay the groundwork for the development of better treatments. The research is multidisciplinary and will permit analyses of the neuropsychology, neuroradiology, neurological, geriatric, and epidemiological of these disorders. All participants will undergo a uniform neurobehavioral assessment, an MRI scan, and a genomic analysis. Individuals who die during the study and who consent to brain donation will undergo advanced neuroimaging and extensive neuropathological exams after they die.

Currently, little is known about the natural history of traumatic brain injuries in civilians, according to Dr. Gordon. Investigators will use extensive resources from an ongoing study of brain aging, a population-based cohort study, Adult Changes in Thought (ACT), based at the University of Washington and Group Health Research Institute, both based in Seattle. The ACT study compiles medical, behavioral, and genetic data for all in the study, 20% of whom have mild-to-moderate traumatic brain injury. Mount Sinai's Brain Injury Research Center will study an additional group of patients.