Spinal Cord and Brain Injury Research Group, Stark Neuroscience Research Institute, Department of Neurosurgery, Indiana University, 320W 15th street, Indianapolis, IN, 46202, United States.
Sci Rep. 2018 May 9;8(1):7339. doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-25475-9.
Symptoms are commonly more severe in pediatric traumatic brain injury (TBI) patients than in young adult TBI patients. To understand the mechanism, juvenile mice received a controlled cortical impact (CCI) injury at moderate level. Tissue lesion and cell death were measured and compared to our previous reports on brain injury in the young adult mice that received same level of impact using same injury device. Tissue lesion and cell death in the cortex was much less in the juvenile mouse brain in the first few hours after injury. However, once the injury occurred, it developed more rapidly, lasted much longer, and eventually led to exaggerated cell death and a 32.7% larger tissue lesion cavity in the cortex of juvenile mouse brain than of young adult mouse brain. Moreover, we found significant cell death in the thalamus of juvenile brains at 72 h, which was not commonly seen in the young adult mice. In summary, cell death in juvenile mice was delayed, lasted longer, and finally resulted in more severe brain injury than in the young adult mice. The results suggest that pediatric TBI patients may have a longer therapeutic window, but they also need longer intensive clinical care after injury.
小儿创伤性脑损伤（TBI）患者的症状通常比年轻成人 TBI 患者更严重。为了了解其机制，幼年小鼠接受了中度的皮质控制冲击（CCI）损伤。测量并比较了组织损伤和细胞死亡，与我们之前使用相同损伤装置在接受相同冲击水平的年轻成年小鼠脑损伤的报告进行了比较。在损伤后的最初几个小时，幼年小鼠脑皮质中的组织损伤和细胞死亡明显较少。然而，一旦损伤发生，其发展速度更快，持续时间更长，最终导致幼年小鼠脑皮质的细胞死亡增加 32.7%，组织损伤腔体积增加 32.7%，明显大于年轻成年小鼠脑皮质。此外，我们发现 72 小时时幼年鼠大脑的丘脑中有明显的细胞死亡，而年轻成年鼠大脑中通常没有这种现象。总之，幼年鼠的细胞死亡延迟、持续时间更长，最终导致比年轻成年鼠更严重的脑损伤。研究结果表明，小儿 TBI 患者可能有更长的治疗窗口期，但他们在受伤后也需要更长时间的强化临床护理。
