“ Our finding adds to a growing body of research that suggests the pathological processes underlying post-traumatic neurodegeneration are distinct from those seen with Alzheimer ’ s disease .”
Traumatic Brain Injury Raises Risk of Brain Atrophy
It has long been known that people who have had traumatic brain injury with loss of consciousness have an increased risk of dementia . But it has been debated whether the increased risk was due to brain changes like those seen with Alzheimer ’ s disease and related dementias or some other process .
Now a new autopsy study from researchers at the University of Washington School of Medicine , Mount Sinai School of Medicine , and Kaiser Permanente Health Research Institute has found that people who reported having lost consciousness after sustaining a traumatic brain injury faced a higher risk of brain atrophy , but not the changes associated with Alzheimer ’ s and related dementias . Brain atrophy is a loss of brain nerve cells and the connections between them . This often leads to decreased brain volume .
“ Our finding adds to a growing body of research that suggests the pathological processes underlying post-traumatic neurodegeneration are distinct from those seen with Alzheimer ’ s disease .”
13
“ Our finding adds to a growing body of research that suggests the pathological processes underlying post-traumatic neurodegeneration are distinct from those seen with Alzheimer ’ s disease ,” said Laura Gibbons , a senior research scientist at the UW School of Medicine ’ s Department of Internal Medicine and lead author on the study . The article was published online in the Journal of Alzheimer ’ s Disease .
In their study , the UW Medicine researchers and their colleagues compared the brains of people who reported having had head trauma with loss of consciousness with those of people who reported never having such an injury . The brains were donated by participants in a Seattle study of brain aging and dementia called the Adult Changes in Thought study . Participants in the ACT