[JohnsHopkinsMedicine]
- FAST FACTS:
Autopsies of combat veterans who survived IEDs and later died of other causes reveal a unique pattern of injuries in parts of the brain involved in decision making, memory, reasoning and other executive functions.
The honeycomb pattern of IED survivorsÂ’ brain injury is different than the effects of motor vehicle crashes, opiate overdoses or punch-drunk syndrome.
The Johns Hopkins-led research team may have found the signature of “shell shock,” or blast neurotrauma, a mysterious ailment that has afflicted soldiers since World War I.
The brains of some Iraq and Afghanistan combat veterans who survived blasts from improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and died later of other causes show a distinctive honeycomb pattern of broken and swollen nerve fibers throughout critical brain regions, including those that control executive function. The pattern is different from brain damage caused by car crashes, drug overdoses or collision sports, and may be the never-before-reported signature of blast injuries suffered by soldiers as far back as World War I.
Soldiers have struggled with bomb-induced brain damage since 1914, when German and Allied forces tried to blast one another out of entrenched positions with months-long bombardments. Many World War I fighters survived the barrage outwardly unscarred, but with an array of cognitive and psychological difficulties known as shell shock. After World War I, mass bombardments of troops were rare, and shell shock became uncommon. Now renamed blast neurotrauma or blast injury to brain, it has re-emerged due to insurgent forcesÂ’ widespread use of IEDs in Iraq and Afghanistan. |