Assessing the Effects of Age and Sex on mTBI Severity

Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is a serious problem affecting soldiers in training and during deployment. Mild Traumatic Brain Injury (mTBI) accounts for over 80% of the TBIs recorded in soldiers in the last two decades. While symptoms may be mild initially,subjection to continued mTBIs could result in severe comorbidities appearing years later. Examination of current research available on mTBI shows an overwhelming skewing of murine animal models used as being solely male and of one age. With age and sex being known to have an affect on TBI, this project set out to explore the differences in severity in various age groups and genders. Using the Missouri Blast Model, a mTBI was inflicted on C57BL/6 mice with a single blast and they were monitored for 30 days. Assessment of the mice occured using the SNAP (Simple Neuroassessment of Asymmetric imPairment) Interactions test and a novel approach designed for tracking by this research team. This project showed that the affects of mTBI were identified in both the traditional SNAP assessment and with the novel tracking method. A larger difference was found between age groups than sex. Researchers were also able to show that the novel tracking method was indeed able to identify the effects of mTBI after 20 days when the traditional method was not. These results confirm the need to do further testing on differences and continue to refine the novel tracking method