Blast traumatic brain injury in the rat using a blast overpressure model.

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a serious health concern for civilians and military populations, and blast-induced TBI (bTBI) has become an increasing problem for military personnel over the past 10 years. To understand the biological and psychological effects of blast-induced injuries and to examine potential interventions that may help to prevent, attenuate, and treat effects of bTBI, it is valuable to conduct controlled animal experiments. This unit discusses available paradigms to model traumatic brain injury in animals, with an emphasis on the relevance of these various models to study blast-induced traumatic brain injury (bTBI). This paper describes the detailed methods of a blast overpressure (BOP) paradigm that has been used to conduct experiments with rats to model blast exposure. This particular paradigm models the pressure wave created by explosions, including improvised explosive devices (IEDs).