Know Your Control Group: Comparison of Military and Civilian Controls in the Study of Traumatic Brain Injury

• Activity Number: 377
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 11, 2015 : 10:30 AM to 11:15 AM
• Sponsor: Mental Health Statistics Section
• Author(s): John Irvine* and Laura Mariano and Ben Rowland and Kristin Heaton and Alexander Lin
• Companies: The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory and Draper Laboratory and Brigham and Women's Hospital and U.S. Army Institute of Environmental Medicine and Brigham and Women's Hospital
• Keywords: biomarkers ; magnetic resonance spectroscopy ; multimodal data ; TBI ; PTSD

Abstract

The understanding of metabolite concentrations in the brain is critical to understanding a range of neurological disorders including brain tumors, stroke, Alzheimer's disease, chronic pain, and other diseases affecting the brain. Magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) provides a non-invasive in vivo technique for studying the metabolites in the brain. Our study focuses on MRS measurements to distinguish subjects having mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and our primary population of interest consists of military personnel and military veterans. We compare MRS data for subjects with PTSD, mTBI, or both; as compared to military and civilian control subjects, together and separately. Recent anecdotal evidence, however, suggests that many military personnel with no diagnosis of TBI may have been exposed to lower levels of concussive stress. This study examines military and civilian control subjects, both with no history of PTSD or mTBI, to assess possible differences in their metabolite compositions and concentrations. We present a description of the experimental procedure, analysis, and implications for related studies.