More than 400,000 military personnel sustained traumatic brain injuries as a result of combat or training accidents between 2000 and 2019 and now the Food and Drug Administration has approved a blood test that can rapidly detect early signs of the condition that has been linked to Parkinson’s disease and other maladies, Army officials announced Monday.
Developing a field-deployable detection system for TBI has been a top priority for the Department of Defense for more than a decade, military officials said.
“A rapid test for TBI is a critical addition to our downrange capability to care for the brain health of our most important weapon system, the Warfighter, and help maintain a high state of readiness across the force,” said Brig. Gen. Michael J. Talley, commander of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command at Fort Detrick in Maryland.
The Army worked in partnership with the Abbott Laboratories pharmaceutical company to develop the i-STATE Alinity Traumatic Brain Injury plasma assay. It can identify two brain-specific protein markers that rapidly appear in the blood following a TBI. Medical professionals will then have objective markers indicating a brain injury rather than relying on subjective descriptions of the injury, officials said.
“The ability to avoid unnecessary evacuations for head CT (computed tomography) scans could really impact the efficiency of TBI management,” said Krista Caudle, product manager for the Warfighter Brain Health Project Management Office.
The Department of Defense partnered with Abbott to develop the TBI biomarkers into a field-deployable laboratory platform. Early assessments of the procedure have been promising and further testing is ongoing, officials said.
• Mike Glenn can be reached at mglenn@washingtontimes.com.
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