Surviving Traumatic Brain Injury

Finding May Lead to Better Screening of Brain Aneurysms

An international team of scientists has found that a major structural protein of cerebral blood vessels in aneurysms is significantly younger than thought. They used radioactive carbon dating to determine the age of a protein, type I collagen. The team found that samples from people with risk factors for stroke (e.g., smoking, high blood pressure) had type I collagen that was far younger than it was in samples from people with no risk factors. The finding of new type I collagen contradicts the widely held assumption that the protein in cerebral aneurysms is long-lived. The scientists feel that the difference in the ages of type I collagen could lead to a screen for aneurysms that could rupture yet be early enough to take measures that would prevent a hemorrhage from happening. (Full story)