Diffusion imaging of mild traumatic brain injury in the impact accelerated rodent model: A pilot study.
Zora Kikinis, Marc Muehlmann, Ofer Pasternak and 11 others
PMID 28627942WHAT IT FOUND
In rats with mild traumatic brain injury, white matter diffusion values were higher seven days after injury, mainly opposite the impact site.
This is animal pilot data, not evidence for human therapy.
Key findings
01Seven days after impact acceleration injury, injured rats had higher average white matter diffusion values than non-injured rats.
02The increased values were localized to specific white matter tracts, mainly in ventral and brain stem regions opposite the impact, with no change at the impact site.
03No significant differences in white matter values were found among the three impact drop heights or among the three foam firmness conditions.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
This was a pilot study in rats, not a human treatment study, so it does not show what to do with patients with mild traumatic brain injury. The final analysis used 17 injured rats and 3 control rats because a target image was excluded from the tract-based analysis. The impact height and foam firmness comparisons had low statistical power, so the study cannot rule out effects of those variables. No brain histology was performed, so the diffusion changes were not confirmed as white matter injury. Behavioral testing was minimal, so the study does not show that the imaging changes matched symptoms or function. The brains were scanned after fixation rather than in living animals, and fixation can change tissue properties. The supplied text does not report random allocation or blinding.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the higher fractional anisotropy in injured rats as a diagnostic finding for human mild traumatic brain injury. This was a small pilot study in fixed rat brains, with no histology or behavioral outcomes, and it did not test human patients.