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Current imaging diagnostic techniques are often insensitive to the underlying pathological changes following mild traumatic brain injury (TBI) or concussion so much so that the explicit definition of these uncomplicated mild brain injuries includes the absence of radiological findings. In the US military, this is complicated by the natural tendency of service members to down play symptoms for fear of removal from their unit particularly in combat making it challenging for clinicians to definitively diagnose and determine course of treatment. Questions remain regarding the long-term impact of these war-time brain injuries. The objective of the current study was to evaluate the long-term imaging sequelae of blast concussion in active-duty US military and leverage previous longitudinal data collected in these same patients to identify predictors of sustained DTI signal change indicative of chronic neurodegeneration. In total, 50 blast TBI and 44 combat-deployed controls were evaluated at this 5-year follow up by advanced neuroimaging techniques including diffusion tensor imaging and quantitative volumetry. While cross-sectional analysis of regions of white matter on DTI images did not reveal significant differences across groups after statistical correction, an approach flexible to the heterogeneity of brain injury at the single-subject level identified 74% of the concussive blast TBI cohort to have reductions in fractional anisotropy indicative of chronic brain injury. Logistic regression leveraging clinical and demographic data collected in the acute/sub-acute and 1-year follow up to determine predictors of these long-term imaging changes determined that brain injury diagnosis, older age, verbal memory and verbal fluency best predicted the presence of DTI abnormalities 5 years post injury with an AUC of 0.78 indicating good prediction strength. These results provide supporting evidence for the evolution not resolution of this brain injury pathology, adding to the growing body of literature describing imaging ...

Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) is a common injury for service members in recent military conflicts. There is insufficient evidence of how best to treat the consequences of mTBI. In a randomized, clinical trial, we evaluated the efficacy of telephone-delivered problem-solving treatment (PST) on psychological and physical symptoms in 356 post-deployment active duty service members from Joint Base Lewis McChord, Washington, and Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Members with medically confirmed mTBI sustained during deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan within the previous 24 months received PST or education-only (EO) interventions. The PST group received up to 12 biweekly telephone calls from a counselor for subject-selected problems. Both groups received 12 educational brochures describing common mTBI and post-deployment problems, with follow-up for all at 6 months (end of PST), and at 12 months. At 6 months, the PST group significantly improved on a measure of psychological distress (Brief Symptom Inventory; BSI-18) compared to the EO group (p = 0.005), but not on post-concussion symptoms (Rivermead Post-Concussion Symptoms Questionnaire [RPQ]; p = 0.19), the two primary endpoints. However, these effects did not persist at 12-month follow-up (BSI, p = 0.54; RPQ, p = 0.45). The PST group also had significant short-term improvement on secondary endpoints, including sleep (p = 0.01), depression (p = 0.03), post-traumatic stress disorder (p = 0.04), and physical functioning (p = 0.03). Participants preferred PST over EO (p < 0.001). Telephone-delivered PST appears to be a well-accepted treatment that offers promise for reducing psychological distress after combat-related mTBI and could be a useful adjunct treatment post-mTBI. Further studies are required to determine how to sustain its effects. (Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT01387490 https://clinicaltrials.gov)