Concussions | Finding Better Ways to Treat

A $3.5 million National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant from the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) has been awarded to Carilion Clinic, Richmond, Virginia-based BRAINBox Solutions, and the University of Pennsylvania to develop a new way to diagnose brain injuries in the elderly. The research occurs in two phases. The first step is enrolling patients and designing a new panel of blood markers and cognitive testing to identify brain injury in all elderly patients, even those with cognitive impairment such as dementia. Phase two will utilize phase one data to determine the tests’ accuracy. When it comes to something as common as concussions, also known as mTBIs, an accurate tool does not currently exist to diagnose the injuries rapidly.