Project led by Ed Needham with Alasdair Coles and David Menon

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is the leading cause of death and disability in young adults in the developed world. Outcome can vary dramatically between people who overtly share the same injury and premorbid characteristics, suggesting as-yet unknown host factors affecting subsequent outcome.

Previoulsy, in a small study, we showed that some people with head injury develop an adpative T cell response to myelin antigens:  Cox A 2006 Neuroimmunol

We are now extending this work and investigating whether TBI induces an autoimmune response against brain antigens, and whether this affects outcome. We work in close collaboration with the University of Cambridge Division of Anaesthesia, who have expertise in advanced neuroimaging of TBI, to assess the relationships between immunological processes and imaging markers. Our work is contributing to the International Collaboration on Neuroinflammation in TBI (ICON-TBI) and the pioneering European CENTER-TBI project.