Traumatic Brain Injury Doubles Risk of Dementia

Traumatic brain injury (TBI), whether mild, moderate, or severe, has been linked to a doubling of dementia risk, reports Kristine Yaffe, from the University of California/San Francisco (UCSF; California, USA), and colleagues.  The team’s retrospective cohort study of 281,540 US veterans aged 55 years or older showed that compared with individuals with no TBI, the risk for incident dementia over 7 years in those with any TBI diagnosis was more than double and was significant for all TBI types. The researchers posit several potential mechanisms  to explain the link between TBI and dementia. The most plausible is that TBI is associated with diffuse axonal injury or swelling of the axons that form connections between the neurons, which disrupts neuronal communication.