Gender Differences in Adolescents' Affective Symptoms and Behavioral Disorders After Mild Traumatic Brain Injury.
Philip T Veliz, Marian E Berryhill
PMID 36689685WHAT IT FOUND
Adolescents with a past mTBI only had more anxiety and attention problems; those with a new mTBI had more aggression.
Girls with past and recent mTBIs had anxiety, social, thought, aggression and conduct symptoms, but only 50 adolescents were in that group.
Key findings
01Adolescents with a past mTBI but none in the past year were more likely to have clinically significant anxiety and attention problems at the first one-year follow-up after adjustment for baseline symptoms.
02Adolescents with a new mTBI were more likely to have clinically significant aggression at the first one-year follow-up after adjustment for baseline symptoms.
03Girls with both a past mTBI and a past-year mTBI were more likely to have clinically significant anxiety, social, thought, aggression and conduct problems, but this group had only 50 adolescents.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
This was an observational analysis, not a treatment study, so it cannot show that mTBI caused the symptoms. mTBI was identified by parent reports of hospital or emergency room care for a head or neck injury, which does not perfectly match clinical mTBI diagnosis, and untreated injuries may be in the no-mTBI group. Symptoms came from parent-reported Child Behavior Checklist scores, not direct clinician assessment, and clinically significant status used a T-score cutoff of 70 or higher. The new mTBI group had 157 adolescents and the past plus past-year group had 50, so sex-specific findings for those groups are unstable. The analysis compared nine symptom outcomes, and the authors said results at the .01 level or lower were considered significant while .05 findings need replication. Interaction models were not adequately powered to precisely detect differences between boys and girls. Missing data were handled by listwise deletion, removing 1.5% of the sample.
Declared interests
The paper states that the other authors have no conflict of interest disclosures to declare.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read these associations as proof that mTBI caused anxiety, attention problems or aggression. The study was observational, mTBI status came from parent-reported emergency room or hospital care for head or neck injury, and the most striking girl findings came from a group of 50 adolescents.