Biomarkers for the diagnosis of traumatic brain injury among patients injured under the influence of alcohol and/or other drugs

Diagnosis of concussion is reliant on self-reports and subjective measures of brain function and ~20% of concussed individuals experience persistent post-concussion symptoms. Diagnosis is therefore not possible in the setting of alcohol and/or other drugs exposure, and such patients may remain undiagnosed or have delayed diagnosis of concussion.

Objective biomarkers for concussion may be useful in this target population, i.e. those with (1) blunt injury to the head (2) have a normal CT scan of the brain or are deemed not to required a CT scan of the brain (3) exposed to AOD (4)recover to a normal GCS. For this population, we hypothesize that one or more biomarkers would be associated with symptoms of concussion at 7-days after injury.