Showing posts with label TBI research. Show all posts
Showing posts with label TBI research. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 29, 2020

TBI is associated with a greater risk of mental health conditions

Critically injured soldiers have high rates of mental health disorders


by University of Massachusetts Amherst
JANUARY 28, 2020
In addition, Chin found that the risk for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is higher—not lower, as previous investigators have assumed—among combat soldiers with more severe TBI.
This chart compares the incidence of various mental health diagnoses among soldiers with TBI vs other serious injuries. Credit: UMass Amherst

U.S. combat soldiers who suffered a moderate or severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) are more likely than soldiers with other serious injuries to experience a range of mental health disorders, according to a new retrospective study by University of Massachusetts Amherst health services researchers.

"A central takeaway is that severe TBI is associated with a greater risk of mental health conditions—not just PTSD," says lead investigator David Chin, assistant professor of health policy and management in the School of Public Health and Health Sciences. "Our findings suggest that patients who are critically injured in combat and sustain severe TBI have particularly high rates of mental health disorders."
Mining data from the U.S. Department of Defense, Chin found that 71% of all the severely injured soldiers were diagnosed in follow-up care with at least one of five mental health conditions: post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety and mood disorders, adjustment reactions, schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders, and cognitive disorders.
read it here

UPDATE

Brain injuries from Iran air strike highlight military's failure to care for its own


USA Today
Stephen N. Xenakis Opinion contributor
Febuary 1, 2020

The medical campaign to treat psychological problems and brain injury has fallen short. Hundreds of thousands suffer the invisible injuries of war.
First the Pentagon said no U.S. troops were injured in Iran's missile strike last month on an Iraqi air base hosting Americans. Then it rose to 11 with brain injuries, then 34, then 50, and by Thursday the number was up to 64. That's upsetting, as was President Donald Trump's recent comment that "it's not very serious."
Shameful failure to help war fighters
Many years passed before the Pentagon acknowledged IED blasts as a game-changing combat injury. In 2004, I alerted the senior leadership in Army medicine. The young amputees at Walter Reed Army Medical Center complained of headaches, sleep problems and “not thinking right.” Any blast powerful enough to take the legs off a ground trooper would certainly rattle his brains. But, then again, the conventional mentality across the country did not acknowledge the damage from repeated concussions, as too many professional football players have tragically experienced.
read it here

Monday, August 7, 2017

Pentagon Says TBI and PTSD Troops Not Getting Proper Care...Again

Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on suicides is one of those videos that everyone needed to watch, but hey, Facebook is more fun. Right? Then again, August 14, 2007 I was wondering why the press wasn't on suicide watch so that maybe, just maybe someone would have done something that would have actually worked. Then again, that was assuming they wanted to do what would work instead of what was easiest.


Troops at risk for suicide not getting needed care, report finds
USA TODAY
Tom Vanden Brook
Published Aug. 7, 2017

WASHINGTON — Pentagon health care providers failed to perform critical follow-up for many troops diagnosed with depression and post-traumatic stress syndrome who also were at high risk for suicide, according to a new study released Monday by the RAND Corp.

Just 30% of troops with depression and 54% with PTSD received appropriate care after they were deemed at risk of harming themselves. The report, commissioned by the Pentagon, looked at the cases of 39,000 troops who had been diagnosed in 2013 with depression, PTSD or both conditions. USA TODAY received an advance copy of the report.

“We want to ensure that they get connected with behavioral health care,” said Kimberly Hepner, the report’s lead author and a senior behavioral scientist at RAND, a non-partisan, non-profit research organization. “The most immediate action — removal of firearms — can help to reduce risk of suicide attempts.”
The report, titled Quality of Care for PTSD and Depression in the Military Health System, also found that one third of troops with PTSD were prescribed with a medication harmful to their condition.
From 2001 to 2014, about 2.6 million troops have deployed to combat zones in Afghanistan and Iraq. Estimates on how many have been affected by post-traumatic stress vary widely — from 4% to 20%, according to the report. Meanwhile, suicide among troops spiked crisis proportions. The rate of suicide doubled between 2005 and 2012, according to the Pentagon. It has stabilized but has not diminished; the rate remains about the same for the part of the American public that it compares with, about 20 per 100,000 people.

The key intervention to prevent suicide involves talking to the service member about their access to firearms, Hepner said. It’s also one of the most sensitive, given the nature of their work and that many troops own their own guns.

“This is important for service members because suicide death by firearms is the most common method,” Hepner said. “So the provider needs to have that discussion about access to firearms. Not only their service weapon but their access to personal weapons.”
read more here
Then again, all you had to do was read THE WARRIOR SAW, SUICIDES AFTER WAR, but don't feel bad. No one else read it, or did anything about any of it.

Tuesday, July 11, 2017

Researchers Still Stuck on Redoing PTSD Research?

Why do researchers fail to see what has been done before? When it comes to PTSD, after 35 years of tracking reports, I keep hoping, praying, they discover something new. I've seen too much suffering with this but as long as they keep redoing what has already been done, we may never see the day when they can cure it.

Take heart though, because you can live a better life and heal but researchers will never take it seriously since spirituality is nothing they can get billions to research.


PTSD may be physical and not only psychological Brain's emotional control center shown to be physically larger
AMERICAN ACADEMY OF NEUROLOGY
July 11, 2017

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - The part of the brain that helps control emotion may be larger in people who develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after brain injury compared to those with a brain injury without PTSD, according to a study released today that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's Sports Concussion Conference in Jacksonville, Fla., July 14 to 16, 2017.

"Many consider PTSD to be a psychological disorder, but our study found a key physical difference in the brains of military-trained individuals with brain injury and PTSD, specifically the size of the right amygdala," said Joel Pieper, MD, MS, of University of California, San Diego. "These findings have the potential to change the way we approach PTSD diagnosis and treatment."

In the brain there is a right and left amygdala. Together, they help control emotion, memories, and behavior. Research suggests the right amygdala controls fear and aversion to unpleasant stimuli.

For this study, researchers studied 89 current or former members of the military with mild traumatic brain injury. Using standard symptom scale ratings, 29 people were identified with significant PTSD. The rest had mild traumatic brain injury without PTSD.

The researchers used brain scans to measure the volume of various brain regions. The subjects with mild traumatic brain injury and PTSD had 6 percent overall larger amygdala volumes, particularly on the right side, compared to those with mild traumatic brain injury only.
read more here

The question is, why redo the same research? The following took about 3 minutes to find.

Amygdala, medial prefrontal cortex, and hippocampal function in PTSD

LM Shin, SL Rauch, RK Pitman - … of the New York Academy of …, 2006 - Wiley Online Library
Abstract: The last decade of neuroimaging research has yielded important information
concerning the structure, neurochemistry, and function of the amygdala, medial prefrontal
cortex, and hippocampus in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Neuroimaging research 

Noradrenergic signaling in the amygdala contributes to the reconsolidation of fear memory: treatment implications for PTSD.

J DebiecJE LeDoux - Annals of the New York Academy of …, 2006 - europepmc.org
Abstract Intrusive memories resulting from an emotional trauma are a defining feature of
posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Existing studies demonstrate that an increase of
noradrenergic activity during a life-threatening event contributes to strengthening or" 

A meta-analysis of structural brain abnormalities in PTSD

A Karl, M Schaefer, LS Malta, D Dörfel… - Neuroscience & …, 2006 - Elsevier
... Received 20 October 2005, Revised 16 March 2006, Accepted 21 March 2006, Available online
26 May 2006. Abstract. ... Meta-analyses also found significantly smaller left amygdala volumes
in adults with PTSD compared to both healthy and trauma-exposed controls, and ...

Trauma modulates amygdala and medial prefrontal responses to consciously attended fear

LM WilliamsAH KempK Felmingham, M Barton… - Neuroimage, 2006 - Elsevier
... of Psychological Medicine, Western Clinical School, University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia;
... Effective fear processing relies on the amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex ... Post-traumatic
stress disorder (PTSD) has been associated with excessive amygdala and a lack of ...

Fear extinction in rats: implications for human brain imaging and anxiety disorders

MR Milad, SL Rauch, RK Pitman, GJ Quirk - Biological psychology, 2006 - Elsevier
... 7004, Ponce, Puerto Rico 00732. Accepted 4 December 2005, Available online 13 February
2006... be fundamental to elucidating the pathophysiology of anxiety disorders, such as PTSD,
and could ... A large body of evidence from rodent studies indicates that the amygdala plays a ...

[HTML] Resolving emotional conflict: a role for the rostral anterior cingulate cortex in modulating activity in the amygdala

A EtkinT Egner, DM Peraza, ER Kandel, J Hirsch - Neuron, 2006 - Elsevier
... conflict for the response to fearful versus happy faces (p = 0.51) or fear versus happy words (p =
0.76; Figure 3B). This is consistent with previous studies that have shown comparable amygdala
activations to fearful and happy facial expression (Fitzgerald et al., 2006 and Yang ...

A review of neuroimaging studies in PTSD: heterogeneity of response to symptom provocation

RA Lanius, R Bluhm, U Lanius, C Pain - Journal of psychiatric research, 2006 - Elsevier
... Volume 40, Issue 8, December 2006, Pages 709–729. Cover image Cover image. ... Liberzon et
al. (1999), SPECT, Combat-related sounds [white noise], Combat veterans PTSD [14], PTSD
group only showed activation in the left amygdaloid region, PTSD group had ...

Neuroimaging studies of emotional responses in PTSD

I Liberzon, B Martis - Annals of the New York Academy of …, 2006 - Wiley Online Library
... Search for more papers by this author. First published: 26 July 2006 Full publication ... suggest the
presence of hyperresponsivity of subcortical structures, specifically the amygdaloid region that
is ... of higher regulatory structures to modulate the activity of the amygdala and related ...

[HTML] Altered amygdala resting-state functional connectivity in post-traumatic stress disorder

CA RabinakM AngstadtRC Welsh… - Frontiers in …, 2011 - ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
... Patients with PTSD not only experience intense negative emotional reactions when reminded
of their trauma ... to fear-relevant probes and other abnormalities in a broad aberrant
amygdala-linked circuitry ... Rauch and Shin, 1997; Pitman et al., 2001; Nemeroff et al., 2006; Rauch ...

Clarifying the origin of biological abnormalities in PTSD through the study of identical twins discordant for combat exposure

RK Pitman, MW Gilbertson, TV Gurvits… - Annals of the New …, 2006 - Wiley Online Library
... Issue online: 26 July 2006; Version of record online: 26 July 2006... system: an initial analysis of
auditory response properties of neurons in the lateral amygdaloid nucleus and ... Amygdala central
nucleus lesions attenuate acoustic startle stimulus-evoked heart rate changes in rats. ...
AND 5 YEARS BEFORE THAT

Amygdala, medial prefrontal cortex, and hippocampal function in PTSD

LM Shin, SL Rauch, RK Pitman - … of the New York Academy of …, 2006 - Wiley Online Library
... 2001. Hippocampal inactivation disrupts contextual retrieval of fear memory after extinction. J.
Neurosci. ... 2004. Regional cerebral blood flow in amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex during
traumatic imagery in male and female Vietnam veterans with PTSD. Arch. Gen. ...

Investigating the pathogenesis of posttraumatic stress disorder with neuroimaging.

RK Pitman, LM Shin, SL Rauch - The Journal of clinical psychiatry, 2001 - psycnet.apa.org
... M.; Rauch, Scott L. The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, Vol 62(Suppl17), 2001, 47-54. ... PTSD, or
may be a consequence of traumatic exposure, PTSD, and/or PTSD sequelae ... measurement of
regional cerebral blood flow have shown greater activation of the amygdala and anterior ...

[HTML] Amygdala response to fearful faces in anxious and depressed children

KM Thomas, WC Drevets, RE Dahl… - Archives of general …, 2001 - jamanetwork.com
... PI Physiological evidence concerning importance of the amygdaloid nuclear region in the
integration of circulatory function and emotion in man. Science. 1954;120949- 950Article. 5. LaBar
KSGatenby JCGore JCLeDoux JEPhelps EA Human amygdala activation during ...

Relationship between acute morphine and the course of PTSD in children with burns

G Saxe, F Stoddard, D Courtney, K Cunningham… - Journal of the American …, 2001 - Elsevier
... the National Center for PTSD, Boston VA Medical Center. Accepted 22 March 2001, Available
online 4 ... exactly the levels that Pitman (1989) proposed as a potential preventive agent for PTSD...
attenuates noradrenergic activity at the level of the LC and, probably, at the amygdala...

Brain imaging in posttraumatic stress disorder.

G Villarreal, CY King - Seminars in Clinical Neuropsychiatry, 2001 - europepmc.org
... your current search. Seminars in Clinical Neuropsychiatry [2001, 6(2):131-145]. 2001/05. Type ...
studies document different patterns of limbic and paralimbic structure activation in PTSD compared
with ... of failure to activate the anterior cingulate as well as amygdala activation during ...

Longitudinal MRI study of hippocampal volume in trauma survivors with PTSD

O Bonne, D Brandes, A Gilboa… - American Journal of …, 2001 - Am Psychiatric Assoc
... Subcortical gray matter and limbic structures (septal area, hippocampus, and amygdala) show
an increase in volume until the third decade of ... 7, 2001... FW, Nagy LM, Kaloupek DG, Gusman
FD, Charney DS, Keane TM: The development of a clinician-administered PTSD scale. ...

[HTML] Regional cerebral blood flow in the amygdala and medial prefrontalcortex during traumatic imagery in male and female vietnam veterans with ptsd

LM Shin, SP Orr, MA Carson, SL Rauch… - Archives of general …, 2004 - jamanetwork.com
... 1996;53380- 387 PubMedArticle. 7. Shin LMMcNally RJKosslyn SMThompson WLRauch SLAlpert
NMMetzger LJLasko NBOrr SPPitman RK Regional cerebral blood flow during script-driven
imagery in childhoodsexual abuse–related PTSD: a PET ... 2001;1581920- 1922.

Disruption of reconsolidation but not consolidation of auditory fear conditioning by noradrenergic blockade in the amygdala

J DÄ™biecJE Ledoux - Neuroscience, 2004 - Elsevier
... Propranolol may therefore be effective in the treatment of PTSD, which appears to involve the
amygdala (Rauch et al ... National Institute for Mental Health grants R37 MH38774 and K05
MH067048, VolkswagenStiftung grant I/77376, and the HFS grant RGP0094/2001-B. ...

Memory processes in post-traumatic stress disorder

CR Brewin - International Review of Psychiatry, 2001 - Taylor & Francis
... and corticosterone and that the sympathetic nervous system, together with the amygdaloid
complex, constitute a ... on the neuroanatomy of pathways subserving fear and memory (see Brewin,
2001, for a ... It is now thought that the amygdala is a key structure responsible for the ...

Corticotropin-releasing hormone in depression and post-traumatic stress disorder

JW Kasckow, D Baker, TD Geracioti - Peptides, 2001 - Elsevier
... 28 June 2000, Accepted 22 November 2000, Available online 30 April 2001... of restraint stress
in rats increases CRH messenger RNA expression in the amygdala... Post-traumatic stress disorder
(PTSD) is a syndrome whose development is intrinsically related to the experience ...

AND 5 YEARS BEFORE THAT

[HTML] Response and habituation of the human amygdala during visual processing of facial expression

HC Breiter, NL Etcoff, PJ Whalen, WA Kennedy… - Neuron, 1996 - Elsevier
... emotional expression (see Figure 1). Based upon human lesion data, we hypothesized that,
compared with neutral faces, fearful faces would induce increased activity within the amygdala
(1, 2 and 16), while happy faces would induce no amygdala activation (Calder et al. 1996 ...

Neuroimaging findings in post-traumatic stress disorder

AM Hull - The British Journal of Psychiatry, 2002 - RCP
... the wide-ranging neurobiological changes in trauma survivors who develop post-traumatic stress
disorder (PTSD). ... functional and structural neuroimaging studies of subjects with PTSD was carried ...
functional changes include increased activation of the amygdala after symptom ...

Why stress is bad for your brain

RM Sapolsky - Science, 1996 - go.galegroup.com
... showed hippocampal atrophy after correction for whole-brain volume, with no atrophy in the
amygdala... Finally PTSD individuals, before joining the military, had high rates of learning disorders
and delayed developmental landmarks that could reflect cerebral ... 16, 3534 (1996). ...

Disruption of reconsolidation but not consolidation of auditory fear conditioning by noradrenergic blockade in the amygdala

J DÄ™biecJE Ledoux - Neuroscience, 2004 - Elsevier
... amygdala. Propranolol may therefore be effective in the treatment of PTSD, which
appears to involve the amygdala (Rauch et al., 1996; Shin et al., 2004), even
after symptoms have developed. Acknowledgments. We ...

Magnetic resonance imaging study of hippocampal volume in chronic, combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder

TV Gurvits, ME Shenton, H Hokama, H Ohta… - Biological …, 1996 - Elsevier
... Received 31 October 1995, Revised 8 April 1996, Available online 22 March 1999. ... The
development of a clinician-administered PTSD scale. J Traumatic Stress, 8 (1995), pp. 75–90. ...
Hippocampus-amygdala volumes and psychopathology in chronic schizophrenia. ...

Topiramate attenuates exaggerated acoustic startle in an animal model of PTSD

S Khan, I Liberzon - Psychopharmacology, 2004 - Springer
... acoustic startle is a highly prevalent behavioral symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
(Shalev et ... When administered into the basolateral amygdala, it attenuates both phenomena
(Walker ... kindling properties in rodent models (Wauquier and Zhou 1996) and produces ...

Exaggerated amygdala response to masked facial stimuli in posttraumatic stress disorder: a functional MRI study

SL RauchPJ Whalen, LM Shin, SC McInerney… - Biological …, 2000 - Elsevier
... employing overt presentation of emotional faces do (eg, Morris et al 1996). ... Because we predicted
amygdala activation to the present experimental manipulation, our a priori significance ... level based
on the approximately 76 voxels that make up the amygdaloid region (Filipek et ...

Functional connectivity of the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala in posttraumatic stress disorder

A GilboaAY Shalev, L Laor, H Lester, Y Louzoun… - Biological …, 2004 - Elsevier
... Animal research shows that the amygdala is crucial in encoding and retrieval of conditioned fearful
memories Armony and LeDoux, 1997 and Grillon et al., 1996Amygdala hyperactivity in human
PTSD was observed in some neuroimaging studies Liberzon et al., 1999, Pissiota ...

Amygdala, medial prefrontal cortex, and hippocampal function in PTSD

LM Shin, SL Rauch, RK Pitman - … of the New York Academy of …, 2006 - Wiley Online Library
... al . 1996. A symptom ... Carson, et al . 2004. Regional cerebral blood flow in amygdala
and medial prefrontal cortex during traumatic imagery in male and female Vietnam
veterans with PTSD. Arch. Gen. Psychiatry 61: 168–176. ...