A team of researchers at Purdue University has developed a method of testing for the onset of diseases that could prove more effective at diagnosing traumatic brain injuries than the multitude of concussion detection devices currently in use across high school, college, and pro sports.
The new method, which Purdue announced earlier this week, uses small vibrating sensors that can detect trace amounts of protein from just a couple drops of blood. The test is able to find proteins that are indicative of certain diseases and other maladies.
According to the research team, this new way of testing for diseases could be especially applicable to finding brain trauma in athletes before symptoms develop. Whereas current medical tests and devices designed to assess concussions and brain injuries by looking for signs such as visual impairment and the force of head impact, this new sensor can detect brain trauma before those signs even manifest, according to Purdue.
The sensors’ ability to detect blood proteins that would suggest traumatic brain injury is due to the leakage of fluids from the brain into the bloodstream when an athlete sustains a head impact, Purdue announced.
“Essentially the idea is that if you can measure anything that passes through the blood-brain barrier from the brain into the blood, it’s a problem because it should stay in the brain,” Eric Nauman, a member of the research team and a professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering and the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering at Purdue, said in a statement.
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A different team of researchers at Purdue — and one that includes Nauman — has, since 2009, been looking into the effects of head injuries, particularly in high school and college football and women’s soccer. That group found that concussions are often the result of cumulative rather than instantaneous impacts, meaning that the blood marker test could be used to detect brain trauma faster than waiting for a concussion to occur.
According to Nauman, 50 percent of high school football players will undergo altered brain chemistry prior to a concussion diagnosis; in comparison, only 5 to 10 percent of players will actually be diagnosed. “You do enough damage, you knock out enough systems and eventually you have symptoms,” Nauman added.
According to Purdue, the blood biomarker test is affordable, allowing high school sports programs, which often struggle for resources in comparison to colleges, to do mass blood tests several times a year.
Nauman said in the announcement that he hopes to begin testing high school athletes next fall.