Monday, July 25, 2011

New Understanding of Bomb Blast Brain Injuries

Full article at: Bomb-blast brain injuries explained

Researchers identify protein pathway involved in traumatic brain injury.
Published online 22 July 2011 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2011.434

"Kit Parker doesn't just study traumatic brain injury in the lab, he's also seen it at close range while serving in Afghanistan. After the initial impact, the connections between nerve cells in the brain retract and sometimes the blood vessels constrict (vasospasm). Research by Parker, a bioengineer at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and his colleagues suggests that a signalling pathway involved in cell contraction — the Rho–ROCK pathway — is responsible for both of these effects.

Their findings are reported in two papers, one published today by PLoS ONE1 and the other last week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences2.