Category Archives: Brain Injury Treatment

Some of the diplomats hurt in a mystery sonic harassment attack on the US embassy in Cuba suffered brain injuries or permanent hearing loss, their staff association said on Friday. Washington recently said at least 16 embassy employees were injured in a series of incidents in Havana that began last year, but officials have not revealed the extent of the injuries. Now, the American Foreign Service Association the labor union representing US diplomatic and international aid personnel has been able to speak to 10 of those who received treatment. Diagnoses include mild traumatic brain injury and permanent hearing loss, with such additional symptoms as loss of balance, severe headaches, cognitive disruption and brain swelling, it said. The State Department has called the attacks unprecedented and has warned Havana it is responsible for the safety of envoys working on its soil without saying who it believes was behind them. Staff members at the US mission, which was reopened as a full embassy in 2015 after a half-century Cold War breakdown in diplomatic relations began reporting sick last year. US officials have told reporters they believe some kind of sonic device was used to covertly undermine the envoys health. Some of the … Continue reading →

Courtesy of Astrocyte Pharmaceuticals Imagine a pill that could make all the NFL's concussion problems go away. Imagine a treatmentor a battery of treatments, therapies and toolsthat eradicates CTE and makes concussions only slightly more mysterious and threatening than sprained ankles. Imagine equipment that provides swift, precise diagnoses, pills that provide immediate relief and speedy recovery and medications that can actually repair the damage that causes long-term brain damage. Imagine wonder drugs that improve (and sometimes save) the lives of not only football players, but also of military veterans, crash victims, stroke victims, opioid addicts and perhaps even those with Alzheimer's disease. It sounds like science fiction. Or a Roger Goodell daydream. But the race to find just such treatments is already underway, and significant progress has already been made. The "concussion pill" may be coming soon. "This is coming in 2025 if all goes well," Dr. William Korinek,the CEO of Astrocyte Pharmaceuticals, said of a drug that turbocharges the brain's ability to heal its own damage. Dr. Kun Ping Lu, who's working on a medication that destroys the compounds that cause brain damage, isn't quite that optimistic but said, "I hope it should be here in 10 years." From … Continue reading →

LONDON -- Since announcing a $100 million commitment to concussion research last year, the NFL has funded just one study examining chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, the brain disease that has shaken pro football. But that study isn't focused on football players. It's focused on jockeys. The project, run out of a four-story brick building in northwest London, aims to find out why high concussion rates in horse racing don't translate into "deteriorating brain function in later life," a question that many scientists believe has little to do with football. The study is led by an Australian researcher who once described American coverage of CTE as "carry-on and hoo-hah" and a British doctor whose concussion presentations sometimes have included flippant jokes and video of tumbling jockeys set to slapstick music. At one presentation, the widow of a CTE victim, a former British soccer star, was so offended she stormed out of the room. The jockey project is part of the NFL's latest effort to stake out a powerful role in research that holds the potential of its own undoing. Last September, the NFL pledged $100 million, doubling down on its previous commitment as one of the largest funders of concussion … Continue reading →

Video abstract presented by Wei Chen. Views: 8 Wei Chen,1 Ming-De Li,2 Gui-Fang Wang,1 Xia-Feng Yang,1 Lin Liu,1 Fan-Gang Meng3 1Department of Neurology, Liaocheng Peoples Hospital, Liaocheng, 2Department of Neurosurgery, The Peoples Hospital in Ling Cheng District, DeZhou, Shandong, 3Department of Functional Neurosurgery, Beijing Neurosurgical Institute, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China Background: To explore the incidence and risk factors, including type of seizures for post-traumatic epilepsy (PTE) after severe traumatic brain injury (TBI).Subjects and methods: This was a retrospective follow-up study of patients discharged from Liaocheng Peoples Hospital between March 2011 and June 2015 with a diagnosis of post-traumatic seizures. Risk factors for PTE were evaluated in 68 inpatients by using KaplanMeier curves and the Cox model.Results: Complete clinical information was available for 68 patients. A total of 54 cases (79.4%) were diagnosed as presenting with PTE, occurring from 10 days to 179 months after severe TBI. Nineteen out of 54 cases (35.2%) had been defined as PTE within the first 6 months after the trauma, 17 cases (31.5%) within 712 months, 8 cases (14.8%) within 1324 months, 2 cases (3.7%) within 2536 months, and 8 cases (14.8%) within 37179 months after the TBI. The KaplanMeier curves demonstrated that simple … Continue reading →

This is the first part in WTOPs Bad Brains special report examining brain injuries in football, what doctors know about them and whats being done to make the game safer. WASHINGTON Dont let kids play football. That was the blunt title of the December 2015 editorial in The New York Times from Dr. Bennet Omalu, the Cassandra of brain injury in Americas most popular sport. Depending on the readers personal experience, it was laughable overreach, a confirmation of worst fears, or, for many, simply the latest piece of frightening rhetoric about a topic that affects millions of Americans but few truly understand. This really is not a concussion problem its an information problem, former NFL lineman Scott Peters told WTOP. When you take a problem like concussions, it creates a lot of fear when you dont have a clear-cut answer. And so the average person is going to withdraw. And while concussions are a risk in every athletic activity, football presents a unique dynamic. WTOPs four-part special report, Bad Brains, will look at some of the people who are on the forefront of trying to create a safer gameon every level, from Pop Warner to the NFL devising better technique, … Continue reading →

Chronic IH can result in a blood clot on the brain, a brain tumour, a brain infection or a blood clot on the brain. It can be life threatening if it is not diagnosed or treated. Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension - also known as IIH mainly affects women in their 20s and 30s and has been linked to being overweight, hormone problems such as Cushings syndrome, taking the contraceptive pill, lack of red blood cells, lupus and kidney disease. The cause of the condition is unclear. Symptoms of chronic IH can include a constant headache - which can be worse in the morning and can occur while coughing, blurred or double vision, temporary loss of vision, feeling and being sick, drowsiness and irritability. If IH comes on suddenly, it could be as a result of stroke, severe head injury, or a brain abscess. Scientists have now discovered common obesity and diabetes drug reduces rise in brain pressure. New research Research led by the University of Birmingham, published in Science Translational Medicine, has discovered that a drug commonly used to treat patients with either obesity or Type 2 diabetes could be used as a new new way to lower brain pressure. IHH … Continue reading →

Early stage concussion drug developer Oxeia Biopharmaceuticals notched an outside-the-lab win last week,signing NFL star cornerback Richard Sherman to its advisory board. Sherman, as well-known for his outspokenness as his game-saving pass defense, had already tweeted his encouragement for its work earlier in the month. Oxeia is preparing to start phase 2 clinical studies on its concussion treatment OXE-103. The molecule is ghrelin, a naturally occurring hormone peptide; Oxeia recently acquiredrights to the med from Kinemed. The next phase is expected to begin in early 2018 and may take up to two years. Sherman already partners with a helmet maker and a nutraceutical company around the cause of brain health and is additionally important for his influence among other professional football players as a member of the board of the NFL Players Association union. As a professional football player, I am acutely aware of the risk posed by concussionswe need to start talking about, and working actively on solutions. I look forward to assisting Oxeia as they develop an FDA-approvable treatment for concussions, he said in a statement. Oxeia co-founder and chief business officer Kartik Shah is pleased to have Sherman on board along with other professional athletes, such as … Continue reading →

August 28, 2017 11:22 ET | Source: Scythian Biosciences Corp. TORONTO, Aug. 28, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Scythian Biosciences Corp. (the Company) (TSXV:SCYB) is pleased to announce that it has entered into a consulting arrangement with The Weinberg Group and has retained The Weinberg Groups services for assistance with the Companys FDA application process, including pre-IND and IND consulting services. About Scythian Biosciences Corp. Scythian is a research and development company committed to finding a solution for the prevention and treatment of concussions and traumatic brain injury with its proprietary Cannabinoid combination. Scythians mission is to be the first accepted drug regimen for concussive treatment. Scythian has recently formed a collaboration with the University of Miami and its world renowned neuroscientific team to conduct pre-clinical and clinical trials of its drug regimen. The University of Miami believes that Scythians scientific approach shows significant promise and differs from previous approaches to treat this growing problem. The collaboration with the University of Miami allows access to their extensive knowledge base in the fields of traumatic brain injury and concussions and allows for Scythians clinical studies to be undertaken at their world-class facilities. Gillian A. Hotz, PhD, is leading Scythians program at the … Continue reading →

The brain is an organ, just like any other. This is one of principles that guides our work at the Flawless Foundation, and we believe its essential that the medical community, political leaders, and the broader public come to embrace this view of the brain as well. For too long, weve understood, talked about, and treated the brain as separate from the rest of the body, and as a result, the health of this organ -- brain health -- has been overlooked or neglected. Furthermore, those with brain health disorders havent benefitted from the same level of care and concern, either from a medical standpoint or culturally. All of this needs to change, and it begins with seeing the brain for exactly what it is. The science is already here. Every day, neuroscience is revealing more and more about the nuances of this vital organ and about how to care for its health. Historically weve intervened with treatment far too late -- as the advocacy organization Mental Health America says, at stage four. Now, thanks to medical and technological breakthroughs, we have the potential for improved practices in prevention and early diagnosis. We now have the ability to screen for … Continue reading →

In the future, patients with neurological conditions such as brain injuries and Parkinson's disease could get faster diagnoses and more precise treatment, due to a collaboration between the National Neuroscience Institute (NNI) and Nanyang Technological University (NTU). The tie-up will see medical practitioners and engineers working together through annual fellowships and student attachment programmes over the next three years. One such project aims to speed up the time taken by radiologists to interpret computed tomography (CT) scans, which could result in faster treatment. It will explore the use of artificial intelligence to identify different types of traumatic brain injuries. An average of 2,000 CT scans are performed at the NNI's Tan Tock Seng Hospital campus every month, not all for brain injuries. Every week, between 20 and 30 patients with traumatic brain injuries are admitted to NNI. The collaboration is key to plugging gaps in real-life applications of both disciplines, said Professor Chen Tsuhan, NTU's dean of the College of Engineering. "A lot of time is spent in the lab working with algorithms or engineering solutions without knowing much about the (clinical) data," he said. "So it is very important for our engineering faculty and students to know the kind … Continue reading →