[Source: Medical News Today]
Researchers at Orlando Health have developed a blood test that can detect even the most subtle signs of a concussion in children, correctly identifying the presence of traumatic brain injuries 94 percent of the time in a recent study.
“This could ultimately change the way we diagnose concussions, not only in children, but in anyone who sustains a head injury,” said Linda Papa, MD, MSC, an emergency medicine physician and NIH funded researcher at Orlando Health and lead author of the study. “We have so many diagnostic blood tests for different parts of the body, like the heart, liver and kidneys, but there’s never been a reliable blood test to identify trauma in the brain. We think this test could change that,” she said.
In a new study published in the journal Academic Emergency Medicine, Papa and her team recently performed CT scans on 152 children and compared the results of those scans with results from the blood test she developed. As expected, the high definition imagery from the CT scans was able to identify which patients had suffered visible traumatic brain injuries. Moreover, the study showed that the blood test detected symptoms of concussions, even when brain injuries were not visible on the CT scan.
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