Traumatic Brain Injury Blog

Growing Support for Treating TBI as a Chronic Disease

Two recent peer reviewed papers support the position statement adopted by the Brain Injury Association in 2009 that “Brain Injury” be treated not as static event from which patients gradually recover over time, but as the beginning of a disease process that that can cause symptoms that change over time, in some cases getting worse instead of better, and that can impact multiple organ systems. 

The good news is that most people do, in fact, recover. For those who do not, however, the disease model is more consistent with the evolving research. As McCrea, Iverson, McAllister, et. al. noted in their 2009 Integrated Review of Recovery after Mild Traumatic Brain Injury, brain injury science has advanced more in the last few years than in the previous 50, causing us to change the paradigms we have used to understand both the injury and its consequences.  Read More

Innovative Public/Private Partnerships Accelerate Brain Injury Research

The “BRAIN” initiative, which stands for Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies, is already underway at the National Institute of Health (NIH).  And, on April 2, 2013 President Obama announced that his 2014 budget will include $110 million in funding to advance the initiative, which supports human brain research that could be used to treat a range of neurological conditions, including traumatic brain injury (TBI).

I expect the additional funds to elevate the project’s urgency, as it would be a joint effort of the National Institutes of Health, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the National Science Foundation along with other private and public entities. If this initiative goes forward, it also promises to augment work already underway at other research centers throughout the country.

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