Healthy Aging with Traumatic Brain Injury

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Effects of Increasing Age with TBI[edit | edit source]

Effects on Cognition[edit | edit source]

People who have had moderate or severe TBI are known to have an increased risk of decline of cognitive abilities, and increased risk of dementia, later in life. One 2015 study[1] compared MRI brain scans of people with TBI to a control group; they developed a computer program with an algorithm to estimate the person't "brain age", and the people with TBI were found to have a brain age on average 5 years older than the control group. The authors note: "There was also a correlation between time since injury and predicted age difference, suggesting that these changes in brain structure do not occur during the injury itself, but result from ongoing biological processes, potentially similar to those seen in normal ageing, that progress more quickly after an injury."

This suggests that after TBI there may be secondary process which lead to increasing brain damage for years afterwards[1].

Effects on Physical Condition[edit | edit source]

People with moderate or severe TBI can experience increased musculoskeletal deterioration with aging, more than occurs in the general non-TBI population. Frequently this occurs due to the nature of the accident/incident which caused the TBI, such as road traffic accident, also causing bony and soft tissue damage to trunk and/or limbs.

Physical Activity[edit | edit source]

The amount of physical activity [PA] which any person with TBI engages in, has a great impact on healthy ageing (just as it does in the general population).

The health benefits of PA are shown below:
Physical and mental health benefits.png


Physical Activity in the TBI population[edit | edit source]

People with TBI have been found to have fitness levels well below the lowest fitness levels of adults (matched for age and sex)[2]. A 2017 Cochrane review examined

References[edit | edit source]

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Cole JH, Leech R, Sharp DJ. Prediction of brain age suggests accelerated atrophy after traumatic brain injury. Annals of Neurology, Vol 77, Issue 4.
  2. ↑ Hassett L, Moseley AM, Harmer AR. Fitness training for cardiorespiratory conditioning after traumatic brain injury. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2017, Issue 12. Art. No.: CD006123. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD006123.pub3
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