Parisian Catherine M, Georgevitch Gregory, Bahr Ben A
Department of English, Theatre, and Foreign Languages, University of North Carolina - Pembroke, Pembroke, North Carolina, USA.
Department of Interdisciplinary Professions, East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina, USA.
J Nat Sci. 2017 Jul;3(7).
Sadly many military veterans, who left home to serve their country honorably, return from service with permanent life-changing injuries. It is easy to remember our debt to those who have incurred such visible injuries, and all too easy to forget the invisible wounds that afflict so many of our military servicemen and women. Brain injuries can be invisible during initial medical evaluations and are often caused by military explosives that create blast shockwaves of varying intensity. One of the most common types of traumatic brain injury (TBI) linked to military service is blast-induced neurotrauma. To better understand this type of injury, a recently published study subjected rat brain slice cultures to detonations of RDX military explosives, resulting in reduced levels of specific synaptic markers. Such alterations have in fact been linked to depressive behavior, anxiety, and cognitive rigidity, and the blast-induced synaptic modifications may underlie the behavioral changes in those TBI sufferers who do not exhibit measurable brain damage. This research has the potential to improve diagnoses by identifying indicators of synapse integrity for the assessment of subtle synaptopathogenesis linked to blast-induced neurotrauma.
令人遗憾的是，许多曾离家去光荣地为国服役的退伍军人，退伍归来时却带着永久性的、改变人生的伤痛。我们很容易记住对那些身负如此明显伤痛的人的亏欠，却极易忘记折磨着众多男女军人的无形创伤。脑损伤在最初的医学评估中可能不易察觉，且往往由军事爆炸物造成，这些爆炸物会产生强度各异的冲击波。与军事服役相关的最常见的创伤性脑损伤（TBI）类型之一是爆炸引起的神经创伤。为了更好地理解这种损伤类型，最近发表的一项研究对大鼠脑片培养物进行了RDX军事炸药引爆实验，结果导致特定突触标志物水平降低。事实上，这种改变与抑郁行为、焦虑和认知僵化有关，而爆炸引起的突触改变可能是那些没有表现出可测量脑损伤的创伤性脑损伤患者行为变化的基础。这项研究有可能通过识别突触完整性指标来改进诊断，以评估与爆炸引起的神经创伤相关的细微突触病变。
