Troops suffer long-term brain impacts from shock waves, Seattle study finds

Seattle researchers, with the aid of sophisticated scanning technology, have found long-term changes in brain functions of Iraq veterans exposed to blast shock waves.

The findings have been published online in the journal NeuroImage, amid a contentious debate among doctors about the causes of memory loss, mood swings, insomnia and other symptoms that afflict some troops shaken up in bomb blasts or other explosions.

Some researchers believe that the brain quickly heals from mild brain trauma and that lingering symptoms result from other problems such as post-traumatic stress disorder. But this study suggests these veterans suffer significant neurological damage.

"This is evidence of persistent alterations of the brain of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans with repetitive blast exposure," said Elaine Peskind, a Veterans Affairs Puget Health Sound Health System psychiatrist who led a team of 11 VA and University of Washington researchers. "These changes are real and long lasting."

Peskind says the results of the brain imaging also raise concerns that some blast-exposed veterans, in their mid-to-later years, will suffer from higher rates of Alzheimer's or other forms of dementia that afflict some professional boxers and football players.

Co-author Donna Cross, of the University of Washington, who worked on the imaging with Eric Petrie and Satoshi Minoshima, recently received an award for the research from the Society of Nuclear Medicine.

Different results

The study is at odds with published findings of Charles Hoge, an influential researcher in military medicine who is convinced that thousands of U.S. military personnel have been misdiagnosed with mild traumatic brain injury.

Hoge, who works in the office of the Army's Surgeon General, says these men and women are more likely to suffer from depression or post-traumatic stress disorder that is largely unrelated to exposure to concussive blasts.

Many of these blasts result from roadside bombs that have been a weapon of choice for insurgents in both Iraq and Afghanistan. These blasts send shock waves that penetrate the skull.  more http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2012110352_brain14m.html

Article courtesy of The Seattle Times by Hal Berntan