Program Manager: COL Geoffrey Ling, M.D., Ph.D.
Previous efforts to understand brain injuries that result from non-kinetic explosive effects have focused on a single explanation―blast overpressure. However, improvised explosive device (IED)-induced injuries in Iraq do not fit this hypothesis. Evidence indicates that traumatic brain injuries unique to exposure to blast exist absent of typical overpressure injuries (damage to gas-filled organs such as the bowel and lungs). The Preventing Violent Explosive Neurologic Trauma (PREVENT) Program seeks to protect our warfighters from traumatic brain injury resulting from such explosions.
The initial phase of the program will comprehensively evaluate the physics of interaction between an IED blast and the neurological system and determine which component(s) are causally associated with neurologic injury. Specific goals include—
- Addressing the mechanisms of explosive blast injury at the molecular as well as the macroscopic scales including, but not limited to, cellular, tissue level, organ level, and organ system level.
- Characterizing the injury over the pathophysiological evolution ranging from primary injury resulting directly from the insult, to the consequent secondary pathophysiological cascade, extending beyond biogenic responses into psychogenic outcomes.
- Isolating the spectrum of physical mechanisms in explosion environments and determining their coupled effects on the central nervous system.
The second phase of the program will focus on prevention of injury and guide the development of passive and active mitigation strategies, the engineering and development of personal protective armor, and therapeutic interventions for those injured. The program also will develop test systems and predictive models. These models will characterize blast exposure in order to optimize treatment paradigms, explosive blast mitigation, and protective strategies.
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