scholarly journals Cognitive Decline Secondary to Therapeutic Brain Radiation—Similarities and Differences to Traumatic Brain Injury

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Jonathan Huang ◽  
David Kornguth ◽  
Steven Kornguth

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) resulting from forceful impacts on the torso and head has been of major interest because of the prevalence of such injuries in military personnel, contact sports and the elderly. Cognitive and behavioral changes associated with TBI are also seen following whole brain radiation treatment for cancer and chemotherapy for disseminated tumors. The biological mechanisms involved in the initiation of TBI from impact, radiation, and chemotherapy to loss of cognitive function have several shared characteristics including increases in blood brain barrier permeability, blood vessel density, increases in inflammatory and autoimmune responses, alterations in NMDA and glutamate receptor levels and release of proteins normally sequestered in the brain into the blood and spinal fluid. The development of therapeutic agents that mitigate the loss of cognition and development of behavioral disorders in patients experiencing radiation-induced injury may provide benefit to those with TBI when similar processes are involved on a cellular or molecular level. Increased collaborative efforts between the radiation oncology and the neurology and psychiatry communities may be of major benefit for the management of brain injury from varied environmental insults.

2011 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. E3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Chan ◽  
Sebastian R. Herrera ◽  
Sergey Neckrysh ◽  
Adam Wallace ◽  
Tibor Valyi-Nagy ◽  
...  

The authors report a case of primitive neuroectodermal tumor induced by radiation therapy of craniopharyngioma. This African-American male patient originally presented with craniopharyngioma, for which he underwent resection and whole-brain radiation therapy. Eight years later, at the age of 20 years, he returned with a left facial droop and left hemiparesis. A right basal ganglia mass was identified and resected. Histopathological examination identified the lesion as primitive neuroectodermal tumor. Although radiation therapy has shown to be beneficial in decreasing the recurrence rate in subtotally resected craniopharyngioma, the risks of radiation treatment should be clearly communicated to the patients, their families, and neurosurgeons before starting such treatment. This report expands the spectrum of reported radiation-induced neoplasms in the CNS.


Life ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 26
Author(s):  
Ping-Hung Lin ◽  
Lu-Ting Kuo ◽  
Hui-Tzung Luh

Neurotrophins are a collection of structurally and functionally related proteins. They play important roles in many aspects of neural development, survival, and plasticity. Traumatic brain injury (TBI) leads to different levels of central nervous tissue destruction and cellular repair through various compensatory mechanisms promoted by the injured brain. Many studies have shown that neurotrophins are key modulators of neuroinflammation, apoptosis, blood–brain barrier permeability, memory capacity, and neurite regeneration. The expression of neurotrophins following TBI is affected by the severity of injury, genetic polymorphism, and different post-traumatic time points. Emerging research is focused on the potential therapeutic applications of neurotrophins in managing TBI. We conducted a comprehensive review by organizing the studies that demonstrate the role of neurotrophins in the management of TBI.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mayra Bittencourt ◽  
Sebastián A. Balart-Sánchez ◽  
Natasha M. Maurits ◽  
Joukje van der Naalt

Self-reported complaints are common after mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). Particularly in the elderly with mTBI, the pre-injury status might play a relevant role in the recovery process. In most mTBI studies, however, pre-injury complaints are neither analyzed nor are the elderly included. Here, we aimed to identify which individual pre- and post-injury complaints are potential prognostic markers for incomplete recovery (IR) in elderly patients who sustained an mTBI. Since patients report many complaints across several domains that are strongly related, we used an interpretable machine learning (ML) approach to robustly deal with correlated predictors and boost classification performance. Pre- and post-injury levels of 20 individual complaints, as self-reported in the acute phase, were analyzed. We used data from two independent studies separately: UPFRONT study was used for training and validation and ReCONNECT study for independent testing. Functional outcome was assessed with the Glasgow Outcome Scale Extended (GOSE). We dichotomized functional outcome into complete recovery (CR; GOSE = 8) and IR (GOSE ≤ 7). In total 148 elderly with mTBI (median age: 67 years, interquartile range [IQR]: 9 years; UPFRONT: N = 115; ReCONNECT: N = 33) were included in this study. IR was observed in 74 (50%) patients. The classification model (IR vs. CR) achieved a good performance (the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve [ROC-AUC] = 0.80; 95% CI: 0.74–0.86) based on a subset of only 8 out of 40 pre- and post-injury complaints. We identified increased neck pain (p = 0.001) from pre- to post-injury as the strongest predictor of IR, followed by increased irritability (p = 0.011) and increased forgetfulness (p = 0.035) from pre- to post-injury. Our findings indicate that a subset of pre- and post-injury physical, emotional, and cognitive complaints has predictive value for determining long-term functional outcomes in elderly patients with mTBI. Particularly, post-injury neck pain, irritability, and forgetfulness scores were associated with IR and should be assessed early. The application of an ML approach holds promise for application in self-reported questionnaires to predict outcomes after mTBI.


2019 ◽  
Vol Volume 11 ◽  
pp. 185-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Federica Edith Pisa ◽  
Jonas Reinold ◽  
Bianca Kollhorst ◽  
Ulrike Haug ◽  
Tania Schink

Brain Injury ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 14 (8) ◽  
pp. 749-761 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark J. Rapoport, Anthony Feinstein

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (16) ◽  
pp. 5613
Author(s):  
Ryuta Nakae ◽  
Yu Fujiki ◽  
Yasuhiro Takayama ◽  
Takahiro Kanaya ◽  
Yutaka Igarashi ◽  
...  

Coagulopathy and older age are common and well-recognized risk factors for poorer outcomes in traumatic brain injury (TBI) patients; however, the relationships between coagulopathy and age remain unclear. We hypothesized that coagulation/fibrinolytic abnormalities are more pronounced in older patients and may be a factor in poorer outcomes. We retrospectively evaluated severe TBI cases in which fibrinogen and D-dimer were measured on arrival and 3–6 h after injury. Propensity score-matched analyses were performed to adjust baseline characteristics between older patients (the “elderly group,” aged ≥75 y) and younger patients (the “non-elderly group,” aged 16–74 y). A total of 1294 cases (elderly group: 395, non-elderly group: 899) were assessed, and propensity score matching created a matched cohort of 324 pairs. Fibrinogen on admission, the degree of reduction in fibrinogen between admission and 3–6 h post-injury, and D-dimer levels between admission and 3–6 h post-injury were significantly more abnormal in the elderly group than in the non-elderly group. On multivariate logistic regression analysis, independent risk factors for poor prognosis included low fibrinogen and high D-dimer levels on admission. Posttraumatic coagulation and fibrinolytic abnormalities are more severe in older patients, and fibrinogen and D-dimer abnormalities are negative predictive factors.


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. i26-i26
Author(s):  
Ali Alattar ◽  
Jiri Bartek ◽  
Brian HIrshman ◽  
Clark Chen

Abstract INTRODUCTION: Ventriculomegaly, or dilatation of the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) space, occurs after whole-brain radiation (WBRT) of brain metastasis (BM) patients due to either 1) hydrocephalus or 2) cerebral atrophy from radiation-induced white matter injury. In this study, we examined whether cumulative radiation from repeat stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) increases the risk of ventriculomegaly. METHODS: Patients were included if they underwent SRS of BM from 2007–2017 and had imaging follow-up. We examined a cohort of 214 patients treated at the University of California San Diego (1,106 BM) and a second cohort of 148 patients (1,760 BM) treated at Karolinska Institutet. Ventriculomegaly was defined according to established morphometric criteria. Patients were grouped according to the development of new ventriculomegaly at last follow-up. Demographic, clinical, and dosimetric factors were compared between groups using univariable and multivariable logistic regressions. RESULTS: In the UCSD cohort, 63 patients (29%) presented with ventriculomegaly before SRS. Of 151 remaining patients with normal ventricular size before first SRS, 30 (20%) developed new ventriculomegaly. The odds of developing ventriculomegaly increased with history of WBRT (OR 5.247, p< 0.001) and trended toward significance with a greater number of SRS treatments (OR 1.296, p=0.075). In the Karolinska cohort, the odds of developing new ventriculomegaly trended towards significance with a greater number of SRS treatments (OR 1.605, p=0.26). To test whether this trend would achieve significance in a larger sample, we repeated the analysis in the combined cohort of 362 patients. The association between number of SRS treatments and developing ventriculomegaly reached significance (OR 1.254, p=0.049). CONCLUSIONS: These pilot findings suggest that cumulative radiation from repeat stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) potentially increases the risk of ventriculomegaly. Based on our study, a prospective study of >350 patients will be needed to further test this hypothesis.


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