Monday, January 25, 2010

Post-traumatic stress diagnosed using magnetism


Post-traumatic stress diagnosed using magnetism

Jan. 21, 2010
Courtesy Institute of Physics
and World Science staff

The thick­et of anx­i­e­ty, re­cur­ring night­mares and related prob­lems that en­velops some war vet­er­ans and oth­er trau­ma sur­vivors has been di­ag­nosed us­ing a phys­i­cal test for the first time, re­search­ers say.

The find­ings are being called a major ad­vance in stu­dy­ing the condition—post-trau­matic stress dis­or­der (PTSD)—which in the past was de­tect­a­ble only through psy­cho­log­i­cal screen­ing.

U.S. war vet­er­ans were in­volved in clin­i­cal tri­als that sci­en­tists say ap­pear to have di­ag­nosed post-trau­matic stress dis­or­der us­ing mag­ne­toen­ceph­al­o­graphy, a non-in­vas­ive meas­ure­ment of mag­net­ic fields in the brain. (Image courtesy U.S. NIH)

This se­vere anx­i­e­ty dis­or­der, en­shrined in pop­ular cons­cious­ness through films such as the Ram­bo se­ries about a tor­m­ented Viet­nam veteran, of­ten stems from war but can re­sult from any trau­matic event. The dis­or­der can man­i­fest it­self in flash­backs, re­cur­ring night­mares, an­ger or hy­per­vi­gil­ance.

U.S. war vet­er­ans were in­volved in clin­i­cal tri­als that sci­en­tists say ap­pear to have di­ag­nosed the dis­or­der us­ing mag­ne­toen­ceph­al­o­graphy, a non-in­vas­ive mea­s­ure­ment of mag­net­ic fields in the brain.

Con­ven­tion­al brain scans had failed to de­tect the dis­or­der, said the re­search­ers, whose work ap­peared Jan. 20 in the Jour­nal of Neu­ral En­gi­neer­ing.

The re­search­ers from the Min­ne­ap­o­lis Vet­er­an Af­fairs Med­i­cal Cen­ter and the Univers­ity of Min­ne­so­ta, led by Apos­to­los P Geor­go­pou­los and Bri­an En­g­dahl, worked with the 74 vet­er­ans who had served in World War II, Vi­et­nam, Af­ghan­i­stan or Iraq, and had been di­ag­nosed with be­hav­iour­al symp­toms of PTSD. Al­so par­ti­ci­pat­ing in the study were a group of peo­ple with­out the dis­or­der.

With more than 90 percent ac­cu­ra­cy, the re­search­ers said, they were able to tell apart PTSD pa­tients from healthy sub­jects us­ing a “syn­chronous neu­ral in­ter­ac­tions test.” This in­volves an­a­lys­ing the mag­net­ic charges re­leased when popula­t­ions of brain cells con­nect or “cou­ple.”

The abil­ity to ob­jec­tively di­ag­nose PTSD is seen as a first step to­wards help­ing those af­flicted with the dis­or­der.

“The ex­cel­lent re­sults ob­tained of­fer ma­jor prom­ise for the use­ful­ness of the syn­chro­nous neu­ral in­ter­ac­tions test for dif­fer­en­tial di­ag­no­sis as well as for mon­i­tor­ing dis­ease pro­gres­sion and for eval­u­at­ing the ef­fects of psy­cho­log­i­cal and/or drug treat­ments,” the re­search­ers wrote.

This work fol­lows suc­cess in de­tecting oth­er brain dis­eases, such as Alzheimer’s and mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis, us­ing the mag­net­ic tech­nique, sci­en­tists said. The meth­od was in­vented by Geor­go­pou­los and the lat­est re­search was funded by the U.S. De­part­ment of Vet­er­ans Af­fairs.

world science

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