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Validation of an Acoustic Wave Induced Traumatic Brain Injury
Author(s) -
Berman Sean,
Mills David
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.30.1_supplement.lb37
Subject(s) - traumatic brain injury , medicine , neuroscience , pulse (music) , animal model , rat model , head trauma , anesthesia , surgery , psychology , computer science , psychiatry , detector , telecommunications
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) affects about 1.9 million Americans every year. Blast traumatic brain injury (bTBI) has been called the signature injury Iraq and Afghanistan wars. bTBI occurs without a direct blow to the head as seen in traditional TBI, but rather occurs as a result of overpressure from an explosion, such as a roadside bomb, that causes the vasculature of the brain to sheer leading to vascular insult. Experimental models for inducing a TBI suffer from two major disadvantages. Methods for inducing a TBI do not effectively model the mechanism by which TBIs and bTBIs induce structural and functional changes in the affected brain tissue. Secondly, most models are invasive with two injury sites, initial cranial opening and brain impact, and therefore do not easily lend themselves to further study of potential treatment modalities within the same experiment animal. We developed a model that better mimics the mechanism of a bTBI insult. We used an acoustic wave technology (a Storz‐D‐Actor device) to induce a consistent and repeatable non‐invasive bTBI on Han‐Wistar rats. The Rotarod test was used to monitor rat motor skills and the Morris Water Maze test was used to monitor memory. Controls received training but no exposure to the acoustic wave. Experimentally, one pulse of using four different acoustic wave pressures was studied: 0, 3.4, 4.2 and 5.0 bar (10 rats/group). Each pulse was administered to each animal's left frontal cortex and rats were sacrificed after 11 days, brains process for histological analysis and stained with Cressyl violet for analysis. Results suggest that the Storz‐D‐Actor administered an effective and closed head bTBI that mimics bTBI blasts and caused a decrease in motor skills ability as well as a loss of memory. Histological analysis showed damage to outer cortex of the brain and necrotic neuronal cells. Our results suggests that the Storz‐D‐Actor can induce a damaging repeatable closed head bTBI that avoids the invasive procedure of a craniotomy and better mimics the mechanism of TBI. Support or Funding Information State of Louisiana Governor's Biotechnology InitiativeValidation of Acoustic Wave Induced Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI Model in Rats