Raquel C. Gardner's research while affiliated with San Francisco VA Medical Center and other places

... Post-traumatic neurodegeneration can result from progressive secondary pathology following a single moderate-severe TBI or from milder repetitive concussive and subconcussive injuries. Secondary processes that contribute to post-traumatic neurodegeneration are important to identify and warrant high priority as therapeutic targets to mitigate the detrimental effects of TBI on long-term brain health [12]. ...

... 26,28 Further, recent findings in clinically normal older adults confirm that in a longitudinal Ab-PET study (two Ab-PET scans, 0.5 to 4,0 years apart), adults with mTBI did not have a significantly higher rate of Ab accumulation over time than those with no remote head trauma. 53 Several other studies have reported association between TBI and amyloid deposition 22,25 ; however, time between TBI and in vivo amyloid assessment was less than 1 year, or the association did not reach significance. 23 Using the MeTeR scale, the current study investigated tau accumulation in AD vulnerable regions; nevertheless, no significant differences in tracer uptake were found on two different veteran cohorts (AIBL-VETS and DOD ADNI), even among those with moderate-to-severe injuries. ...

... There is a high association between mTBI and PTSD among blast-exposed military service members (Stein et al., 2019). Multiple symptoms overlap between these two conditions, making teasing apart the effects of one from the other difficult. ...

... TREM2 is also expressed in the microglia of the brain, regulating microglial activation and playing a multi-faceted role in its immune response [102,103]. Animal studies have shown that TREM2 is upregulated in the early stages following injury, making it a potential biomarker for TBI and other head injuries [104]. When microglia in the brain are activated, following injury, cleavage of TREM2 by proteases follows. ...

... Moreover, only 26% of TBI patients received written information or educational material, and only 6% had a follow-up appointment in hospital. Both the CENTER-TBI and TRACK-TBI study revealed that 30% of patients discharged from the emergency department did not attain full recovery after 6 months [120]. 9 of 21 Taken together, access to neurorehabilitation and structured follow-up care following TBI remains suboptimal; at the same time, post-acute diagnostic and treatment options for TBI patients, especially those with DoC, are currently limited. ...

... In geriatric patients who present to the ED after fall-related head trauma, there is a significant risk of injury due to repeat falls with an increasing risk of associated morbidity and mortality proportional to each subsequent fall [6,7]. In particular, patients with a traumatic brain injury have a 30-day readmission rate between 8.9% and 14.4% [8,9]. ...

... TBI affects large numbers of people worldwide [4,[8][9][10], and leads to TBI mortality range from about 15 to 30 per 100,000 population each year [11]. TBI has been considered as a risk factor for cognitive dysfunction [6,12]: it was seen to be related to an elevated risk of progressing any dementia [13,14], and especially Alzheimer disease (AD) [14][15][16]. Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is one of the neurocognitive diseases related to TBI that is caused as a result of repetitive moderate head damages [17,18]. ...