Sorry it's from the Daily Mail (UK trash paper)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...ess-social-adjustment-disorders-soldiers.html
"In the study, the scientists used a molecular marker to track a protein called APP that normally travels from one nerve cell to another via a long nerve fibre, or axon.
When axons are broken by an injury, APP and other proteins accumulate at the breaks, causing swelling.
In the brains of four of the five veterans who survived wartime blast injuries, the axonal bulbs were medium-sized and usually arrayed in a honeycomb pattern near blood vessels.
‘We did not see that pattern in other types of brain injury,’ Professor Koliatsos said.
The veterans’ brains did not show signs of the neurodegenerative disease known as punch-drunk syndrome, which is caused by multiple concussions.
But near the damaged axons, specialised cells, called microglia, that are involved in brain inflammation, were revealed.
Dr Koliatsos explained: ‘In brains that had been exposed to blasts, we see microglial cells right next to these unusual axonal abnormalities.
The presence of these cells suggests the veterans who overdosed had pre-existing brain injuries.
Lesions may be fragments of nerve fibres that broke at the time of the blast and slowly deteriorated, or may have been weakened by the blast and broken by some later accident like a concussion or drug overdose, the study says.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...ess-social-adjustment-disorders-soldiers.html
"In the study, the scientists used a molecular marker to track a protein called APP that normally travels from one nerve cell to another via a long nerve fibre, or axon.
When axons are broken by an injury, APP and other proteins accumulate at the breaks, causing swelling.
In the brains of four of the five veterans who survived wartime blast injuries, the axonal bulbs were medium-sized and usually arrayed in a honeycomb pattern near blood vessels.
‘We did not see that pattern in other types of brain injury,’ Professor Koliatsos said.
The veterans’ brains did not show signs of the neurodegenerative disease known as punch-drunk syndrome, which is caused by multiple concussions.
But near the damaged axons, specialised cells, called microglia, that are involved in brain inflammation, were revealed.
Dr Koliatsos explained: ‘In brains that had been exposed to blasts, we see microglial cells right next to these unusual axonal abnormalities.
The presence of these cells suggests the veterans who overdosed had pre-existing brain injuries.
Lesions may be fragments of nerve fibres that broke at the time of the blast and slowly deteriorated, or may have been weakened by the blast and broken by some later accident like a concussion or drug overdose, the study says.
