BBC radio programme on traumatic brain injury

[MeSci]

This is maybe not exactly news or research, but a fascinating account of the experience of a man who suffered a traumatic brain injury in a car accident. The symptoms are remarkably similar to many ME/SEID symptoms, ditto the way the man has to manage them.

Every year around a quarter of a million people suffer traumatic brain injury in the UK. James Piercy is one of those. On 30th January 2011. a nail pierced the tyre of the car he was travelling in. The car left the road and hit a tree.

This is the story of his injury and subsequent recovery. He meets the policeman who held his head and kept him breathing, the air ambulance team who rushed him to hospital and the surgeon who drilled a hole in his skull in the middle of the night.

James also takes a journey through our current understanding of the brain, and how studying injuries like James' are helping to shape the modern, very different, explanations of how our brains work.

Presented by James Piercy

Producer: Toby Murcott
A Pier Production for BBC Radio 4.

You can listen online here.

 

[Esther12]

I'm interested in these things, but don't really like listening/watching things that focus on one person. It's often a bit too haunting/upsetting.

There's some really nasty stuff around rehabilitation from brain injury too, a lot of it similar to BPS CFS stuff. There is also more respectable approaches, but a lot of people with brain injuries seem to get shat upon.

 

[Valentijn]

This is maybe not exactly news or research, but a fascinating account of the experience of a man who suffered a traumatic brain injury in a car accident. The symptoms are remarkably similar to many ME/SEID symptoms, ditto the way the man has to manage them.

If House MD is any authority on the matter, physical trauma can release otherwise dormant infections into the blood stream. At least, getting punched in the nads in that episode caused some severe syphilis problems in someone who had previously been perfectly healthy

Anyhow, it could be a theory that's capable of explaining why a subset of ME and fibromyalgia patients seem to start getting symptoms after a car crash or falling off a horse.

 

[MeSci]

I'm interested in these things, but don't really like listening/watching things that focus on one person. It's often a bit too haunting/upsetting.

There's some really nasty stuff around rehabilitation from brain injury too, a lot of it similar to BPS CFS stuff. There is also more respectable approaches, but a lot of people with brain injuries seem to get shat upon.

I take your points, but this programme is actually made by the sufferer himself, is very upbeat and generally cheerful, although sad at the end when he reports having lost his wife in the crash. He doesn't dwell on that.

I was just so struck by listening to him describing how he had learned to cope with the brain damage, having to plan everything that he used to be just able to do without planning or thinking, like us.

 

[Wayne]

The symptoms are remarkably similar to many ME/SEID symptoms, ditto the way the man has to manage them.

Hi @MeSci,

My ME/SEID symptoms started following a head injury when I was 15 years old. It took years for them to gradually manifest, and many more years for me to make the connection to the original head injury. Along the way it appears I picked up a few unfortunate chronic infections, which I've chalked up to a disrupted immune system brought on--at least in part--by that injury.

You may want to check out this PR thread from 2012, in which a mother posts about her son committing suicide, and connecting it back to a head injury he had as a child. I believe she started a website focusing on head injuries, and as i recall, mentioned that 1 out of 3 head injuries (even mild ones) result in some degree of hypopituitarism.

So it would seem that head injuries and "post concussion syndrome" often involves the pituitary gland--which as I recall is often referred to as the master gland. If there's pituitary gland involvement, I would then assume this would result in HPA dysfunction--a common hallmark of pwME/SEID.

 

[MeSci]

Hi @MeSci,

My ME/SEID symptoms started following a head injury when I was 15 years old. It took years for them to gradually manifest, and many more years for me to make the connection to the original head injury. Along the way it appears I picked up a few unfortunate chronic infections, which I've chalked up to a disrupted immune system brought on--at least in part--by that injury.

You may want to check out this PR thread from 2012, in which a mother posts about her son committing suicide, and connecting it back to a head injury he had as a child. I believe she started a website focusing on head injuries, and as i recall, mentioned that 1 out of 3 head injuries (even mild ones) result in some degree of hypopituitarism.

So it would seem that head injuries and "post concussion syndrome" often involves the pituitary gland--which as I recall is often referred to as the master gland. If there's pituitary gland involvement, I would then assume this would result in HPA dysfunction--a common hallmark of pwME/SEID.

I did a PR search for hypopituitarism (boy - what a hard word to spell!) and there are a lot of threads mentioning it. I agree that it could be a factor here. I suffered a concussion in the early 1980s, but don't recall developing ME-type symptoms - other than some spells of temporary weakness or sleepiness (one or more of which occurred before the concussion) - until the 1990s. But of course it is likely that ME has multiple causes even in the same person, which may include predisposition, infection and/or physical trauma.

 

[Hip]

Research has shown that the sickness behavior cytokines IL-1β, TNF-α and IL-6 become acutely raised after a
traumatic brain injury (TBI), but these subside a few days later.

However, studies have discovered that increased microglial activation can be still present up to 17 years after traumatic brain injury. Ref: here.

The latter might help explain the ME/CFS symptoms that can appear after TBI, since ME/CFS has been shown to involve chronic microglial activation.


Though note that hypopituitarism will occur in up to 30% of people who sustain a moderate or severe traumatic brain injury, and can sometimes occur even in mild TBI cases. Hypopituitarism can have symptoms very close to those of ME/CFS.