You may have noticed that I mixed things up this week, posting this week’s book review a day early. I did that because I had the wonderful opportunity to attend Research Day today at my local VA hospital. Now, VA health care is not exactly a shining star in the news today. And, given this whole “secret list” embarrassment, that is not surprising. However, while this is a significant black eye on the organization charged to care for veterans, what I saw today tells me that there is also a lot of good coming out of VA as well. Before I get to what I learned, let me tell you about Research Day.
Research Day is part of an annual event, Research Week, which is generally held the third week of May. The event showcases some of the many research endeavors being funded by VA. Over the years, these endeavors have helped produce some incredible medical advances, such as the pacemaker and the CT scan, and VA researchers Dr. Roger Guillemin and Dr. Andrew Schally even won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1977 for their work on peptide hormone production.
Each location will have different research programs based on their set up. The one I attended was for the North Florida/South Georgia VA system and covered several programs being developed with researchers at the neighboring University of Florida. The topics were varied and covered cardiovascular disease, the linkage between sleep apnea and kidney disease, testosterone replacement in older men, cancer, and, of course, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI).
Since TBI is the topic of this week’s posts, I’m going to focus on those presentations. First came representatives from the Center of Innovation on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (CINDRR – pronounced like “cinder”). Their Technology and Telehealth Department is working on developing “cognitive aids” using smart technology, which are designed to help individuals with TBI reintegrate into the community. One such aid uses virtual environments for “therapeutic solutions” by creating a digital grocery store to help veterans work through the “cognitive and emotional challenges” that can be associated with this scenario.
I have to say this was something of a revelation to me. I have been reading about TBI this week and I know it can affect decisionmaking abilities (sometimes called “executive function”). I also know that, even without TBI, my first trip to the grocery store post-deployment was a bit overwhelming. However, it hadn’t occurred to me that something like this would be included in the rehabilitation process for a veteran with TBI. Which is exactly why Research Day is such an incredible opportunity!
But, it gets even more interesting, at least in my opinion. The last speaker was Floyd J. Thompson, PhD, whose topic was New Insights in the Understanding and Therapy for Traumatic Brain Injury. In an intriguing presentation, Dr. Thompson talked about studying TBI in rats, specifically about the use of a currently prohibited medicine in treatment of TBI symptoms. His research focused on one specific area, the Locus Coeruleus, which supplies norepinephrine to the body and is one of the neural systems being injured in TBI.
The research indicated that injuries to this area of the brain can cause “spasticity” and anxiety and impact cognition, balance, moods, pain interpretation, and “serial” learning ability. His testing discovered that norepinephrine doesn’t seem to be consistently working its way down the spinal cord after a TBI, causing these various issues. One thing about his research that stuck out for me was that exercise can increase norepinephrine production by almost 300%, almost as much as some medications.
This is just some of the interesting information I learned from attending Research Day. Many VA facilities across the country will be holding similar events next week, 19-23 May, as part of Research Week. To find out when your local VA will be holding their events and what those events are, click here. If getting to your local VA isn’t possible next week, then you can check out videos of a few developments here.
You can find the abstract of the article on Dr. Thompson’s findings here. You can also watch a wonderful interview with Dr. Guillemin, who has a fascinating life story, here. And an equally interesting biography of Schally here.
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