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Traumatic brain injuries increase Alzheimer's risk. Arizona institute aims to find out why

brain scans of Alzheimer's patients
The Noble Study/ADCS
Various brain scans of Alzheimer's patients.
Coverage of aging is supported in part by AARP Arizona

Traumatic brain injury can increase the risk of developing dementia by almost 70%. Now researchers at Barrow Neurological Institute will study why that is.

Researchers at Barrow received a $2.5 million grant from the Department of Defense to do a four-year study. Chia-Ling Phuah is an associate professor of neurology and neurosurgery there.

"In the United States alone, there's an estimated 3 million new cases of traumatic brain injury a year," Phuah said.

And many of these people will go on to suffer from long-term effects, like developing Alzheimer’s disease.

"So, what we're doing is, we're looking at genetic factors, we're also looking at individual factors, such as how severe the head injury is; the number of head injuries one sustains — does that play a role? Does age play a role? Does the time in which the head injury happens during our lifespan play a role?" Phuah said.

The goal is to eventually develop new drugs that could be given to those who have sustained a TBI, so that they do not develop Alzheimer's disease.

"By identifying those factors, that could be like a roadmap to guide us to develop new drugs that we could give to people who have sustained head injury."

KJZZ senior field correspondent Kathy Ritchie has 20 years of experience reporting and writing stories for national and local media outlets — nearly a decade of it has been spent in public media.
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