New approach to traumatic brain injuries
Bioengineers at Harvard have, for the first time, explained how the blast of an exploding bomb can translate into subtly disastrous injuries in the nerve cells and blood vessels of the brain. The research addresses two major aspects of traumatic brain injury (TBI), with significant implications for the medical treatment of soldiers wounded by explosions. Papers published in the journals Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and the Public Library of Science’s PLoS One provide the most comprehensive explanation to date of how abrupt mechanical forces cause catastrophic physiological changes within the brain’s neurons and vasculature. “These results have been a long time coming,” says principal investigator Kevin Kit Parker, a professor of bioengineering at Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and a major in the U.S. Army. “So many young men and women are returning from military service with brain injuries, and we just don’t know how to...