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Israeli Researchers Discover Early Detection Method for Concussions

by ISRAEL21c |

As concern grows in the United States about the danger of head injuries to American football players after a spate of recent high-school deaths, an Israeli team has developed a new magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) diagnostic approach that can more easily visualize and assess the consequences of even mild injuries to the brain.

Dr. Alon Friedman and his team at the Brain Imaging Research Center at Israel’s Ben Gurion University of the Negev and its affiliated Soroka University Medical Center in Beersheva showed, for the first time, how they were able to identify significant damage to the blood-brain barrier (BBB) of football players following “unreported” trauma or mild concussions. The method uses dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI) to detect and localize vascular pathology and BBB breakdown. The BBB is composed of proteins, membranes and other materials that protect the brain by preventing many dangerous substances from penetrating. Medical researchers, including Friedman’s group at BGU, are working to find ways to develop drugs that could repair a damaged BBB and possibly prevent Alzheimer’s disease and other neurological diseases in some patients.

Forty percent of the examined football players with unreported concussions had evidence of “leaky BBB” compared to 8.3 percent of the control athletes. Published in the current issue of JAMA Neurology, this study could help physicians in the decision-making process regarding treatment and when an athlete may return to the playing field. Other members of the research team include BGU Ph.D. candidates Itai Weissberg and Ronel Veksler, who developed the new imaging method. Lyn Kamintsky, Rotem Saar-Ashkenazy and Dan Z. Milkovsky conducted the study. Dr. Ilan Shelef, BGU lecturer and a member of the department of medical imaging at Soroka University Medical Center, also contributed. The publication of this study follows closely on the heels of Tel Aviv University study showing that an enhanced environment could speed the healing of traumatic brain injuries.

In August, an Israeli company, ElMindA received FDA approval for its brain-function analysis system that could also be used to detect concussions.

(via Israel21c)

[Photo: John McStravick / Flickr]

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