Browsing by Author "Wisniewski, Stephen R."

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    Blood Biomarkers for Detection of Brain Injury in COVID-19 Patients
    (Mary Ann Liebert, 2021) DeKosky, Steven T.; Kochanek, Patrick M.; Valadka, Alex B.; Clark, Robert S. B.; Chou, Sherry H. Y.; Au, Alicia K.; Horvat, Christopher; Jha, Ruchira M.; Mannix, Rebekah; Wisniewski, Stephen R.; Wintermark, Max; Rowell, Susan E.; Welch, Robert D.; Lewis, Lawrence; House, Stacey; Tanzi, Rudolph E.; Smith, Darci R.; Vittor, Amy Y.; Denslow, Nancy D.; Davis, Michael D.; Glushakova, Olena Y.; Hayes, Ronald L.; Pediatrics, School of Medicine
    The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) virus attacks multiple organs of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients, including the brain. There are worldwide descriptions of neurological deficits in COVID-19 patients. Central nervous system (CNS) symptoms can be present early in the course of the disease. As many as 55% of hospitalized COVID-19 patients have been reported to have neurological disturbances three months after infection by SARS-CoV-2. The mutability of the SARS-COV-2 virus and its potential to directly affect the CNS highlight the urgency of developing technology to diagnose, manage, and treat brain injury in COVID-19 patients. The pathobiology of CNS infection by SARS-CoV-2 and the associated neurological sequelae of this infection remain poorly understood. In this review, we outline the rationale for the use of blood biomarkers (BBs) for diagnosis of brain injury in COVID-19 patients, the research needed to incorporate their use into clinical practice, and the improvements in patient management and outcomes that can result. BBs of brain injury could potentially provide tools for detection of brain injury in COVID-19 patients. Elevations of BBs have been reported in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and blood of COVID-19 patients. BB proteins have been analyzed in CSF to detect CNS involvement in patients with infectious diseases, including human immunodeficiency virus and tuberculous meningitis. BBs are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for diagnosis of mild versus moderate traumatic brain injury and have identified brain injury after stroke, cardiac arrest, hypoxia, and epilepsy. BBs, integrated with other diagnostic tools, could enhance understanding of viral mechanisms of brain injury, predict severity of neurological deficits, guide triage of patients and assignment to appropriate medical pathways, and assess efficacy of therapeutic interventions in COVID-19 patients.
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    Life-Threatening Bleeding in Children: A Prospective Observational Study
    (Wolters Kluwer, 2021) Leonard, Julie C.; Josephson, Cassandra D.; Luther, James F.; Wisniewski, Stephen R.; Allen, Christine; Chiusolo, Fabrizio; Davis, Adrienne L.; Finkelstein, Robert A.; Fitzgerald, Julie C.; Gaines, Barbara A.; Goobie, Susan M.; Hanson, Sheila J.; Hewes, Hilary A.; Johnson, Laurie H.; McCollum, Mark O.; Muszynski, Jennifer A.; Nair, Alison B.; Rosenberg, Robert B.; Rouse, Thomas M.; Sikavitsas, Athina; Singleton, Marcy N.; Steiner, Marie E.; Upperman, Jeffrey S.; Vogel, Adam M.; Wills, Hale; Winkler, Margaret K.; Spinella, Philip C.; Surgery, School of Medicine
    Objectives: The purpose of our study was to describe children with life-threatening bleeding. Design: We conducted a prospective observational study of children with life-threatening bleeding events. Setting: Twenty-four childrens hospitals in the United States, Canada, and Italy participated. Subjects: Children 0-17 years old who received greater than 40 mL/kg total blood products over 6 hours or were transfused under massive transfusion protocol were included. Interventions: Children were compared according bleeding etiology: trauma, operative, or medical. Measurements and main results: Patient characteristics, therapies administered, and clinical outcomes were analyzed. Among 449 enrolled children, 55.0% were male, and the median age was 7.3 years. Bleeding etiology was 46.1% trauma, 34.1% operative, and 19.8% medical. Prior to the life-threatening bleeding event, most had age-adjusted hypotension (61.2%), and 25% were hypothermic. Children with medical bleeding had higher median Pediatric Risk of Mortality scores (18) compared with children with trauma (11) and operative bleeding (12). Median Glasgow Coma Scale scores were lower for children with trauma (3) compared with operative (14) or medical bleeding (10.5). Median time from bleeding onset to first transfusion was 8 minutes for RBCs, 34 minutes for plasma, and 42 minutes for platelets. Postevent acute respiratory distress syndrome (20.3%) and acute kidney injury (18.5%) were common. Twenty-eight-day mortality was 37.5% and higher among children with medical bleeding (65.2%) compared with trauma (36.1%) and operative (23.8%). There were 82 hemorrhage deaths; 65.8% occurred by 6 hours and 86.5% by 24 hours. Conclusions: Patient characteristics and outcomes among children with life-threatening bleeding varied by cause of bleeding. Mortality was high, and death from hemorrhage in this population occurred rapidly.
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    Traumatic brain injury: progress and challenges in prevention, clinical care, and research
    (Elsevier, 2022) Maas, Andrew I. R.; Menon, David K.; Manley, Geoffrey T.; Abrams, Mathew; Åkerlund, Cecilia; Andelic, Nada; Aries, Marcel; Bashford, Tom; Bell, Michael J.; Bodien, Yelena G.; Brett, Benjamin L.; Büki, András; Chesnut, Randall M.; Citerio, Giuseppe; Clark, David; Clasby, Betony; Cooper, D. Jamie; Czeiter, Endre; Czosnyka, Marek; Dams-O'Connor, Kristen; De Keyser, Véronique; Diaz-Arrastia, Ramon; Ercole, Ari; van Essen, Thomas A.; Falvey, Éanna; Ferguson, Adam R.; Figaji, Anthony; Fitzgerald, Melinda; Foreman, Brandon; Gantner, Dashiell; Gao, Guoyi; Giacino, Joseph; Gravesteijn, Benjamin; Guiza, Fabian; Gupta, Deepak; Gurnell, Mark; Haagsma, Juanita A.; Hammond, Flora M.; Hawryluk, Gregory; Hutchinson, Peter; van der Jagt, Mathieu; Jain, Sonia; Jain, Swati; Jiang, Ji-Yao; Kent, Hope; Kolias, Angelos; Kompanje, Erwin J. O.; Lecky, Fiona; Lingsma, Hester F.; Maegele, Marc; Majdan, Marek; Markowitz, Amy; McCrea, Michael; Meyfroidt, Geert; Mikolić, Ana; Mondello, Stefania; Mukherjee, Pratik; Nelson, David; Nelson, Lindsay D.; Newcombe, Virginia; Okonkwo, David; Orešič, Matej; Peul, Wilco; Pisică, Dana; Polinder, Suzanne; Ponsford, Jennie; Puybasset, Louis; Raj, Rahul; Robba, Chiara; Røe, Cecilie; Rosand, Jonathan; Schueler, Peter; Sharp, David J.; Smielewski, Peter; Stein, Murray B.; von Steinbüchel, Nicole; Stewart, William; Steyerberg, Ewout W.; Stocchetti, Nino; Temkin, Nancy; Tenovuo, Olli; Theadom, Alice; Thomas, Ilias; Torres Espin, Abel; Turgeon, Alexis F.; Unterberg, Andreas; Van Praag, Dominique; van Veen, Ernest; Verheyden, Jan; Vande Vyvere, Thijs; Wang, Kevin K. W.; Wiegers, Eveline J. A.; Williams, W. Huw; Wilson, Lindsay; Wisniewski, Stephen R.; Younsi, Alexander; Yue, John K.; Yuh, Esther L.; Zeiler, Frederick A.; Zeldovich, Marina; Zemek, Roger; InTBIR Participants and Investigators; Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, School of Medicine
    Traumatic brain injury (TBI) has the highest incidence of all common neurological disorders, and poses a substantial public health burden. TBI is increasingly documented not only as an acute condition but also as a chronic disease with long-term consequences, including an increased risk of late-onset neurodegeneration. The first Lancet Neurology Commission on TBI, published in 2017, called for a concerted effort to tackle the global health problem posed by TBI. Since then, funding agencies have supported research both in high-income countries (HICs) and in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs). In November 2020, the World Health Assembly, the decision-making body of WHO, passed resolution WHA73.10 for global actions on epilepsy and other neurological disorders, and WHO launched the Decade for Action on Road Safety plan in 2021. New knowledge has been generated by large observational studies, including those conducted under the umbrella of the International Traumatic Brain Injury Research (InTBIR) initiative, established as a collaboration of funding agencies in 2011. InTBIR has also provided a huge stimulus to collaborative research in TBI and has facilitated participation of global partners. The return on investment has been high, but many needs of patients with TBI remain unaddressed. This update to the 2017 Commission presents advances and discusses persisting and new challenges in prevention, clinical care, and research. In LMICs, the occurrence of TBI is driven by road traffic incidents, often involving vulnerable road users such as motorcyclists and pedestrians. In HICs, most TBI is caused by falls, particularly in older people (aged ≥65 years), who often have comorbidities. Risk factors such as frailty and alcohol misuse provide opportunities for targeted prevention actions. Little evidence exists to inform treatment of older patients, who have been commonly excluded from past clinical trials—consequently, appropriate evidence is urgently required. Although increasing age is associated with worse outcomes from TBI, age should not dictate limitations in therapy. However, patients injured by low-energy falls (who are mostly older people) are about 50% less likely to receive critical care or emergency interventions, compared with those injured by high-energy mechanisms, such as road traffic incidents. Mild TBI, defined as a Glasgow Coma sum score of 13–15, comprises most of the TBI cases (over 90%) presenting to hospital. Around 50% of adult patients with mild TBI presenting to hospital do not recover to pre-TBI levels of health by 6 months after their injury. Fewer than 10% of patients discharged after presenting to an emergency department for TBI in Europe currently receive follow-up. Structured follow-up after mild TBI should be considered good practice, and urgent research is needed to identify which patients with mild TBI are at risk for incomplete recovery. The selection of patients for CT is an important triage decision in mild TBI since it allows early identification of lesions that can trigger hospital admission or life-saving surgery. Current decision making for deciding on CT is inefficient, with 90–95% of scanned patients showing no intracranial injury but being subjected to radiation risks. InTBIR studies have shown that measurement of blood-based biomarkers adds value to previously proposed clinical decision rules, holding the potential to improve efficiency while reducing radiation exposure. Increased concentrations of biomarkers in the blood of patients with a normal presentation CT scan suggest structural brain damage, which is seen on MR scanning in up to 30% of patients with mild TBI. Advanced MRI, including diffusion tensor imaging and volumetric analyses, can identify additional injuries not detectable by visual inspection of standard clinical MR images. Thus, the absence of CT abnormalities does not exclude structural damage—an observation relevant to litigation procedures, to management of mild TBI, and when CT scans are insufficient to explain the severity of the clinical condition. Although blood-based protein biomarkers have been shown to have important roles in the evaluation of TBI, most available assays are for research use only. To date, there is only one vendor of such assays with regulatory clearance in Europe and the USA with an indication to rule out the need for CT imaging for patients with suspected TBI. Regulatory clearance is provided for a combination of biomarkers, although evidence is accumulating that a single biomarker can perform as well as a combination. Additional biomarkers and more clinical-use platforms are on the horizon, but cross-platform harmonisation of results is needed. Health-care efficiency would benefit from diversity in providers. In the intensive care setting, automated analysis of blood pressure and intracranial pressure with calculation of derived parameters can help individualise management of TBI. Interest in the identification of subgroups of patients who might benefit more from some specific therapeutic approaches than others represents a welcome shift towards precision medicine. Comparative-effectiveness research to identify best practice has delivered on expectations for providing evidence in support of best practices, both in adult and paediatric patients with TBI. Progress has also been made in improving outcome assessment after TBI. Key instruments have been translated into up to 20 languages and linguistically validated, and are now internationally available for clinical and research use. TBI affects multiple domains of functioning, and outcomes are affected by personal characteristics and life-course events, consistent with a multifactorial bio-psycho-socio-ecological model of TBI, as presented in the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) 2022 report. Multidimensional assessment is desirable and might be best based on measurement of global functional impairment. More work is required to develop and implement recommendations for multidimensional assessment. Prediction of outcome is relevant to patients and their families, and can facilitate the benchmarking of quality of care. InTBIR studies have identified new building blocks (eg, blood biomarkers and quantitative CT analysis) to refine existing prognostic models. Further improvement in prognostication could come from MRI, genetics, and the integration of dynamic changes in patient status after presentation. Neurotrauma researchers traditionally seek translation of their research findings through publications, clinical guidelines, and industry collaborations. However, to effectively impact clinical care and outcome, interactions are also needed with research funders, regulators, and policy makers, and partnership with patient organisations. Such interactions are increasingly taking place, with exemplars including interactions with the All Party Parliamentary Group on Acquired Brain Injury in the UK, the production of the NASEM report in the USA, and interactions with the US Food and Drug Administration. More interactions should be encouraged, and future discussions with regulators should include debates around consent from patients with acute mental incapacity and data sharing. Data sharing is strongly advocated by funding agencies. From January 2023, the US National Institutes of Health will require upload of research data into public repositories, but the EU requires data controllers to safeguard data security and privacy regulation. The tension between open data-sharing and adherence to privacy regulation could be resolved by cross-dataset analyses on federated platforms, with the data remaining at their original safe location. Tools already exist for conventional statistical analyses on federated platforms, however federated machine learning requires further development. Support for further development of federated platforms, and neuroinformatics more generally, should be a priority. This update to the 2017 Commission presents new insights and challenges across a range of topics around TBI: epidemiology and prevention (section 1); system of care (section 2); clinical management (section 3); characterisation of TBI (section 4); outcome assessment (section 5); prognosis (Section 6); and new directions for acquiring and implementing evidence (section 7). Table 1 summarises key messages from this Commission and proposes recommendations for the way forward to advance research and clinical management of TBI.