Blast-induced brain injury in rats leads to transient vestibulomotor deficits and persistent orofacial pain.
Paige E Studlack, Kaspar Keledjian, Tayyiaba Farooq and 4 others
PMID 30346868WHAT IT FOUND
Rats exposed to a blast brain injury had short-lived balance and walking problems, but facial pain signs lasted weeks.
They did not show lasting anxiety-like behaviour.
Key findings
01Blast-exposed rats took longer to cross a narrow beam 24 hours after injury, but recovered by 3 days.
02At 58 to 68 days, blast-exposed rats had lower facial mechanical withdrawal thresholds (median 5.23 vs sham 13.12).
03Three anxiety tests at 3 weeks found no anxiety-like effect after blast exposure.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
This is a rat model, not a human study, so it does not show what therapy would help patients. The paper says the blast levels used would likely be lethal to a large subpopulation of humans. The study used only male rats, so it says nothing about female responses. Some pain analyses used small groups, with n=5 blast and n=4 sham rats for facial grimace and n=10 blast and n=9 sham rats for facial withdrawal thresholds. The model did not show anxiety-like behaviour, so it may not capture PTSD-like features seen in some humans.
Declared interests
The supplied text does not include an author conflicts-of-interest declaration. The article is tagged as supported by NIH extramural research and U.S. Government non-PHS research support.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this as proof that a treatment works or that human blast injury causes these findings. It is a rat model, and the paper says the blast levels used would likely be lethal to a large subpopulation of humans.