Many people with very minor head injuries or injuries to other parts of their bodies can experience severe symptoms like those caused by a concussion, and a new study sheds light on why. The symptoms can be debilitating and include headaches, dizziness, cognitive impairment and even irritability, anxiety and insomnia.
People who have been in accidents and have no head injuries sometimes have post-concussion syndrome and some people experience cognitive impairment after surgery or cancer treatments or with several other conditions. Researchers wanted to know why and began to compare details of all these cases to find a common denominator.
Symptoms caused by inflammation
“We began to find increasing evidence that these were in fact post-inflammatory syndromes and the inflammation could be in the body or in the brain or both,” said Michel Rathbone, a professor of medicine at McMaster University and lead author of this study.
ListenNew hope
This finding gives scientists new ways to investigate the cause of post-concussion symptoms in people who have no obvious brain injury and it suggests a new way to treat the symptoms may be to target inflammation.
This could provide new hope for people who suffer cognitive dysfunction after surgeries or traumas, says Rathbone.
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