Browsing by Author "LaConte, Stephen M."

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    Acute White-Matter Abnormalities in Sports-Related Concussion: A Diffusion Tensor Imaging Study from the NCAA-DoD CARE Consortium
    (Mary Ann Liebert, 2018-11-15) Mustafi, Sourajit Mitra; Harezlak, Jaroslaw; Koch, Kevin M.; Nencka, Andrew S.; Meier, Timothy B.; West, John D.; Giza, Christopher C.; DiFiori, John P.; Guskiewicz, Kevin M.; Mihalik, Jason P.; LaConte, Stephen M.; Duma, Stefan M.; Broglio, Steven P.; Saykin, Andrew J.; McCrea, Michael; McAllister, Thomas W.; Wu, Yu-Chien; Radiology and Imaging Sciences, School of Medicine
    Sports-related concussion (SRC) is an important public health issue. Although standardized assessment tools are useful in the clinical management of acute concussion, the underlying pathophysiology of SRC and the time course of physiological recovery after injury remain unclear. In this study, we used diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to detect white matter alterations in football players within 48 h after SRC. As part of the NCAA-DoD CARE Consortium study of SRC, 30 American football players diagnosed with acute concussion and 28 matched controls received clinical assessments and underwent advanced magnetic resonance imaging scans. To avoid selection bias and partial volume effects, whole-brain skeletonized white matter was examined by tract-based spatial statistics to investigate between-group differences in DTI metrics and their associations with clinical outcome measures. Mean diffusivity was significantly higher in brain white matter of concussed athletes, particularly in frontal and subfrontal long white matter tracts. In the concussed group, axial diffusivity was significantly correlated with the Brief Symptom Inventory and there was a similar trend with the symptom severity score of the Sport Concussion Assessment Tool. In addition, concussed athletes with higher fractional anisotropy performed better on the cognitive component of the Standardized Assessment of Concussion. Overall, the results of this study are consistent with the hypothesis that SRC is associated with changes in white matter tracts shortly after injury, and these differences are correlated clinically with acute symptoms and functional impairments.
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    Effects of White-Matter Tract Length in Sport-Related Concussion: A Tractography Study from the NCAA-DoD CARE Consortium
    (Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., 2022-11) Mustafi, Sourajit M.; Yang, Ho-Ching; Harezlak, Jaroslaw; Meier, Timothy B.; Brett, Benjamin L.; Giza, Christopher C.; Goldman, Joshua; Guskiewicz, Kevin M.; Mihalik, Jason P.; LaConte, Stephen M.; Duma, Stefan M.; Broglio, Steven P.; McCrea, Michael A.; McAllister, Thomas W.; Wu, Yu-Chien; Psychiatry, School of Medicine
    Sport-related concussion (SRC) is an important public health issue. White-matter alterations after SRC are widely studied by neuroimaging approaches, such as diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Although the exact anatomical location of the alterations may differ, significant white-matter alterations are commonly observed in long fiber tracts, but are never proven. In the present study, we performed streamline tractography to characterize the association between tract length and white-matter microstructural alterations after SRC. Sixty-eight collegiate athletes diagnosed with acute concussion (24–48 h post-injury) and 64 matched contact-sport controls were included in this study. The athletes underwent diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) in 3.0 T MRI scanners across three study sites. DTI metrics were used for tract-based spatial statistics to map white-matter regions-of-interest (ROIs) with significant group differences. Whole-brain white-mater streamline tractography was performed to extract “affected” white-matter streamlines (i.e., streamlines passing through the identified ROIs). In the concussed athletes, streamline counts and DTI metrics of the affected white-matter fiber tracts were summarized and compared with unaffected white-matter tracts across tract length in the same participant. The affected white-matter tracts had a high streamline count at length of 80–100 mm and high length-adjusted affected ratio for streamline length longer than 80 mm. DTI mean diffusivity was higher in the affected streamlines longer than 100 mm with significant associations with the Brief Symptom Inventory score. Our findings suggest that long fibers in the brains of collegiate athletes are more vulnerable to acute SRC with higher mean diffusivity and a higher affected ratio compared with the whole distribution.
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    Effects of White-Matter Tract Length in Sport-Related Concussion: A Tractography Study from the NCAA-DoD CARE Consortium
    (Mary Ann Liebert, 2022) Mustafi, Sourajit M.; Yang, Ho-Ching; Harezlak, Jaroslaw; Meier, Timothy B.; Brett, Benjamin L.; Giza, Christopher C.; Goldman, Joshua; Guskiewicz, Kevin M.; Mihalik, Jason P.; LaConte, Stephen M.; Duma, Stefan M.; Broglio, Steven P.; McCrea, Michael A.; McAllister, Thomas W.; Wu, Yu-Chien; Radiology and Imaging Sciences, School of Medicine
    Sport-related concussion (SRC) is an important public health issue. White-matter alterations after SRC are widely studied by neuroimaging approaches, such as diffusion magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Although the exact anatomical location of the alterations may differ, significant white-matter alterations are commonly observed in long fiber tracts, but are never proven. In the present study, we performed streamline tractography to characterize the association between tract length and white-matter microstructural alterations after SRC. Sixty-eight collegiate athletes diagnosed with acute concussion (24–48 h post-injury) and 64 matched contact-sport controls were included in this study. The athletes underwent diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) in 3.0 T MRI scanners across three study sites. DTI metrics were used for tract-based spatial statistics to map white-matter regions-of-interest (ROIs) with significant group differences. Whole-brain white-mater streamline tractography was performed to extract “affected” white-matter streamlines (i.e., streamlines passing through the identified ROIs). In the concussed athletes, streamline counts and DTI metrics of the affected white-matter fiber tracts were summarized and compared with unaffected white-matter tracts across tract length in the same participant. The affected white-matter tracts had a high streamline count at length of 80–100 mm and high length-adjusted affected ratio for streamline length longer than 80 mm. DTI mean diffusivity was higher in the affected streamlines longer than 100 mm with significant associations with the Brief Symptom Inventory score. Our findings suggest that long fibers in the brains of collegiate athletes are more vulnerable to acute SRC with higher mean diffusivity and a higher affected ratio compared with the whole distribution.
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    Longitudinal Associations Between Blood Biomarkers and White Matter MRI in Sport-Related Concussion
    (Wolters Kluwer, 2023) Wu, Yu-Chien; Wen, Qiuting; Thukral, Rhea; Yang, Ho-Ching; Gill, Jessica M.; Gao, Sujuan; Lane, Kathleen A.; Meier, Timothy B.; Riggen, Larry D.; Harezlak, Jaroslaw; Giza, Christopher C.; Goldman, Joshua; Guskiewicz, Kevin M.; Mihalik, Jason P.; LaConte, Stephen M.; Duma, Stefan M.; Broglio, Steven P.; Saykin, Andrew J.; Walker McAllister, Thomas; McCrea, Michael A.; Radiology and Imaging Sciences, School of Medicine
    Background and objectives: To study longitudinal associations between blood-based neural biomarkers (including total tau, neurofilament light [NfL], glial fibrillary acidic protein [GFAP], and ubiquitin C-terminal hydrolase-L1) and white matter neuroimaging biomarkers in collegiate athletes with sport-related concussion (SRC) from 24 hours postinjury to 1 week after return to play. Methods: We analyzed clinical and imaging data of concussed collegiate athletes in the Concussion Assessment, Research, and Education (CARE) Consortium. The CARE participants completed same-day clinical assessments, blood draws, and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) at 3 time points: 24-48 hours postinjury, point of becoming asymptomatic, and 7 days after return to play. DTI probabilistic tractography was performed for each participant at each time point to render 27 participant-specific major white matter tracts. The microstructural organization of these tracts was characterized by 4 DTI metrics. Mixed-effects models with random intercepts were applied to test whether white matter microstructural abnormalities are associated with the blood-based biomarkers at the same time point. An interaction model was used to test whether the association varies across time points. A lagged model was used to test whether early blood-based biomarkers predict later microstructural changes. Results: Data from 77 collegiate athletes were included in the following analyses. Among the 4 blood-based biomarkers, total tau had significant associations with the DTI metrics across the 3 time points. In particular, high tau level was associated with high radial diffusivity (RD) in the right corticospinal tract (β = 0.25, SE = 0.07, p FDR-adjusted = 0.016) and superior thalamic radiation (β = 0.21, SE = 0.07, p FDR-adjusted = 0.042). NfL and GFAP had time-dependent associations with the DTI metrics. NfL showed significant associations only at the asymptomatic time point (|β|s > 0.12, SEs <0.09, psFDR-adjusted < 0.05) and GFAP showed a significant association only at 7 days after return to play (βs > 0.14, SEs <0.06, psFDR-adjusted < 0.05). The p values for the associations of early tau and later RD were not significant after multiple comparison adjustment, but were less than 0.1 in 7 white matter tracts. Discussion: This prospective study using data from the CARE Consortium demonstrated that in the early phase of SRC, white matter microstructural integrity detected by DTI neuroimaging was associated with elevated levels of blood-based biomarkers of traumatic brain injury. Total tau in the blood showed the strongest association with white matter microstructural changes.
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    Longitudinal white-matter abnormalities in sports-related concussion: A diffusion MRI study
    (Wolters Kluwer, 2020-08) Wu, Yu-Chien; Harezlak, Jaroslaw; Elsaid, Nahla M. H.; Lin, Zikai; Wen, Qiuting; Mustafi, Sourajit M.; Riggen, Larry D.; Koch, Kevin M.; Nencka, Andrew S.; Meier, Timothy B.; Mayer, Andrew R.; Wang, Yang; Giza, Christopher C.; DiFiori, John P.; Guskiewicz, Kevin M.; Mihalik, Jason P.; LaConte, Stephen M.; Duma, Stefan M.; Broglio, Steven P.; Saykin, Andrew J.; McCrea, Michael A.; McAllister, Thomas W.; Radiology and Imaging Sciences, School of Medicine
    Objective To study longitudinal recovery trajectories of white matter after sports-related concussion (SRC) by performing diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) on collegiate athletes who sustained SRC. Methods Collegiate athletes (n = 219, 82 concussed athletes, 68 contact-sport controls, and 69 non–contact-sport controls) were included from the Concussion Assessment, Research and Education Consortium. The participants completed clinical assessments and DTI at 4 time points: 24 to 48 hours after injury, asymptomatic state, 7 days after return-to-play, and 6 months after injury. Tract-based spatial statistics was used to investigate group differences in DTI metrics and to identify white-matter areas with persistent abnormalities. Generalized linear mixed models were used to study longitudinal changes and associations between outcome measures and DTI metrics. Cox proportional hazards model was used to study effects of white-matter abnormalities on recovery time. Results In the white matter of concussed athletes, DTI-derived mean diffusivity was significantly higher than in the controls at 24 to 48 hours after injury and beyond the point when the concussed athletes became asymptomatic. While the extent of affected white matter decreased over time, part of the corpus callosum had persistent group differences across all the time points. Furthermore, greater elevation of mean diffusivity at acute concussion was associated with worse clinical outcome measures (i.e., Brief Symptom Inventory scores and symptom severity scores) and prolonged recovery time. No significant differences in DTI metrics were observed between the contact-sport and non–contact-sport controls. Conclusions Changes in white matter were evident after SRC at 6 months after injury but were not observed in contact-sport exposure. Furthermore, the persistent white-matter abnormalities were associated with clinical outcomes and delayed recovery time
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    Stability of MRI metrics in the advanced research core of the NCAA-DoD concussion assessment, research and education (CARE) consortium
    (Springer Nature, 2018-08) Nencka, Andrew S.; Meier, Timothy B.; Wang, Yang; Muftuler, L. Tugan; Wu, Yu-Chien; Saykin, Andrew J.; Harezlak, Jaroslaw; Brooks, M. Alison; Giza, Christopher C.; Difiori, John; Guskiewicz, Kevin M.; Mihalik, Jason P.; LaConte, Stephen M.; Duma, Stefan M.; Broglio, Steven; McAllister, Thomas; McCrea, Michael A.; Koch, Kevin M.; Radiology and Imaging Sciences, School of Medicine
    The NCAA-DoD Concussion Assessment, Research, and Education (CARE) consortium is performing a large-scale, comprehensive study of sport related concussions in college student-athletes and military service academy cadets. The CARE "Advanced Research Core" (ARC), is focused on executing a cutting-edge investigative protocol on a subset of the overall CARE athlete population. Here, we present the details of the CARE ARC MRI acquisition and processing protocol along with preliminary analyzes of within-subject, between-site, and between-subject stability across a variety of MRI biomarkers. Two experimental datasets were utilized for this analysis. First, two "human phantom" subjects were imaged multiple times at each of the four CARE ARC imaging sites, which utilize equipment from two imaging vendors. Additionally, a control cohort of healthy athletes participating in non-contact sports were enrolled in the study at each CARE ARC site and imaged at four time points. Multiple morphological image contrasts were acquired in each MRI exam; along with quantitative diffusion, functional, perfusion, and relaxometry imaging metrics. As expected, the imaging markers were found to have varying levels of stability throughout the brain. Importantly, between-subject variance was generally found to be greater than within-subject and between-site variance. These results lend support to the expectation that cross-site and cross-vendor advanced quantitative MRI metrics can be utilized to improve analytic power in assessing sensitive neurological variations; such as those effects hypothesized to occur in sports-related-concussion. This stability analysis provides a crucial foundation for further work utilizing this expansive dataset, which will ultimately be freely available through the Federal Interagency Traumatic Brain Injury Research Informatics System.