Studies uncover long-term effects of traumatic brain injury – Medical Xpress

February 10, 2017 Credit: Robert Kraft/public domain

Doctors are beginning to get answers to the question that every parent whose child has had a traumatic brain injury (TBI) wants to know: What will my child be like 10 years from now?

In a study to be presented Friday Feb. 10 at the annual meeting of the Association of Academic Physiatrists in Las Vegas, researchers from Cincinnati Children's will present research on long-term effects of TBIan average of seven years after injury. Patients with mild to moderate brain injuries are two times more likely to have developed attention problems, and those with severe injuries are five times more likely to develop secondary ADHD. These researchers are also finding that the family environment influences the development of these attention problems.

More than 630,000 children and teenagers in the United States are treated in emergency rooms for TBI each year. But predictors of recovery following TBI, particularly the roles of genes and environment, are unclear. These environmental factors include family functioning, parenting practices, home environment, and socioeconomic status. Researchers at Cincinnati Children's are working to identify genes important to recovery after TBI and understand how these genes may interact with environmental factors to influence recovery.

Using neuroimaging and other technologies, scientists are also learning more about brain structure and connectivity related to persistent symptoms after TBI. In a not-yet-published Cincinnati Children's study, for example, researchers investigated the structural connectivity of brain networks following aerobic training. The recovery of structural connectivity they discovered suggests that aerobic training may lead to improvement in symptoms.

Over the past two decades, investigators at Cincinnati Children's have conducted a series of studies to develop and test interventions to improve cognitive and behavioral outcomes following pediatric brain injury. They developed an innovative web-based program that provides family-centered training in problem-solving, communication, and self-regulation.

Explore further: Drug shown to aid injured adult brains may exacerbate cognitive problems in children

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is one of the leading causes of disability and death in infants and children in the United States, with more than half a million affected annually, according to the Centers for Disease Control ...

Pharmacological therapy combined with a rehabilitation program that teaches how to compensate for memory and attention problems offers new hope for people who suffer the consequences of traumatic brain injury. Such a combined ...

As more and more lesbian and gay adults adopt children, controversies continue regarding comparative parenting skills and the impact on the children.

A new study from the University of Rochester sheds light on how parents and caregivers of children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) can best help their kids, and at the same time, maintain peace at home and at ...

For the first time, researchers have shown that computerized cognitive rehabilitation (a program to help brain-injured or otherwise cognitively impaired individuals to restore normal functioning) can improve attention and ...

The incidence of concussion is particularly high in the preschool years - up to around 2% of children aged 0 to 5 years per year. A study by researchers at CHU Sainte-Justine mother-child research hospital (affiliated with ...

Doctors are beginning to get answers to the question that every parent whose child has had a traumatic brain injury (TBI) wants to know: What will my child be like 10 years from now?

What are some ways you cope with stresses in your life? Do you do yoga? Meditate? Exercise? Perhaps you should add taking prebiotics to that list.

A team of biomedical scientists has identified a molecule that targets a gene known to play a critical role in the rapid progression of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), sometimes known as Lou Gehrig's disease, the neurodegenerative ...

To stay healthy, neurons must prevent protein aggregates and defective organelles such as mitochondria from accumulating inside them. We now know that an animal species has found a solution to its neuronal trash problemone ...

Researchers have identified a genetic signature found exclusively in the nerve cells that supply, or innervate, the muscles of an organism's outermost extremities: the hands and feet. This signature, observed in both mice ...

Stroke is a type of lesion caused by reduced blood flow to the brain, which results in the death of some of the brain's neurons. Such lesions typically cause severe difficulties for the person who endures them. We base this ...

Please sign in to add a comment. Registration is free, and takes less than a minute. Read more

Here is the original post:
Studies uncover long-term effects of traumatic brain injury - Medical Xpress