A new nationwide research system costing £9.5 million is underway to revolutionise the way those who have experienced a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) are diagnosed and treated, by collating the results from different studies in the UK for the first time.
The scheme, which is being led by the University of Cambridge, is expected to improve the recovery of TBI patients by making more research information available to enable doctors to predict more accurately how those patients are likely to react to different treatments.
The system, which has been named TBI-REPORTER, has created a great deal of interest because TBI is the biggest cause of death and injury in the UK among people under the age of 40 and can leave young patients incapacitated with conditions like epilepsy, dementia and poor mental health for the rest of their lives.
As a result, the scheme will consult closely with the public, patients, and their families through the UK Acquired Brain Injury Forum (UKABIF). In addition, it will actively support research among disadvantaged groups of people who have previously rarely been studied, including prisoners, the homeless and victims of domestic violence.
The programme is being funded jointly by the Medical Research Council (MRC), the National Institute for Health and Care Research, the Ministry of Defence and Alzheimer’s Research UK.
Other educational bodies helping to co-ordinate the work are Imperial College London and the Universities of Glasgow, Sheffield, and Swansea. The eventual aim is that TBI-REPORTER will help to establish a network of hospitals specialising in neuroscience which will share their development of better ways of treating people with TBI.
The intention is that all research data will be shared and will be made available to UK and international researchers. It is hoped that this, in turn, will lead to more people being treated more effectively as doctors become able to predict how a certain injury is likely to affect a patient with TBI, with a view to offering them individually tailored care.
Professor David Menon, Head of the Division of Anaesthesia at the University of Cambridge, who is leading the project, said: “It is a privilege to lead this ambitious platform, which brings together a breadth of experts and draws on the lived experience of TBI survivors and their families. We also believe that our work, in combination with that of international partners, will re-energise drug development in TBI and deliver new treatments for patients.”
Professor John Iredale, Executive Chair of MRC, part of UKRI, said: “We recognise the devastating impacts TBI can have for its survivors and those who care for them, and are determined to improve the status quo.
“This award will capitalise on the UK’s unique scientific strengths to see research into TBI accelerated on a scale not seen before. This will lead to the discoveries we need to give survivors of TBI all around the world a much more hopeful future.”
Alzheimer’s Research UK is supporting the scheme because of growing evidence that TBI can ultimately lead to Alzheimer’s or dementia.
The project will coordinate the collection and processing of human blood and other samples such as dialysis fluid from brain pressure monitoring in critically injured patients with TBI. It is also aiming to organise the archiving of post-mortem and surgical tissue samples in specialist tissue banks.
For further details, go to www.ukri.org/news/research-platform-to-transform-treatment-of-traumatic-brain-injury/ and https://tbi-reporter.uk/
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