Grant: DRA : Canada Graduate Research Scholarship - Doctoral Program (CGRS D)

Every year, approximately 165,000 people experience a traumatic brain injury (TBI) in Canada. It is estimated that the average lifetime medical care costs due to TBI is roughly $1.3 million. TBI can be a mild injury like a sports-related concussions, a severe life-threatening injury, or anything in between. Right now, it is hard to tell if someone has a sports-related concussion or a mild TBI because the symptoms are often general (ex. headaches) and don't always clearly point to a brain injury. As even mild TBI and concussions can lead to long-term problems and delay someone's return to normal activities, it is important to find a way to quickly and accurately identify a TBI. Recent discoveries show that certain proteins in the blood known as blood-based biomarkers, can be measured to help detect a head injury. While some proteins can clearly identify someone who has a serious TBI, in milder brain injuries like sports-related concussions, the changes in the protein levels can be very small and may not tell us if someone has a sports-related concussion or not. In addition, the majority of TBI research has focused on adults, so we know much less about TBI in youth. To address these issues in TBI research, we are using a machine that measures 131 proteins at once to take a broad snapshot of youth's protein levels in the blood before and after both a sports-related concussion as well as after more severe forms of TBI. Our research has 3 main goals: 1) Use population-wide data to determine whether the changes in some proteins are large enough to diagnose a sports-related concussion in youth athletes, 2) Use a panel of 131 proteins to find ones with better ability to identify sports-related concussions in youth athletes, and (3) Use the same 131 proteins across all types of TBI (mild to severe) to identify proteins that can detect other kinds of TBI in youth.