Blood tests next step in establishing a diagnosis

Doctors looking for new ways to determine whether patient is suffering from concussion

It’s a confounding reality of what remains an invisible injury.

Broken bones show up on X-rays, torn muscles on an MRI. But a concussion can’t yet be detected by an easy diagnostic test. Some of the world’s best experts hope that will change soon enough.

“Maybe some day soon we’re going to be able to diagnose a concussion with a blood test, just like you can diagnose a heart attack with a blood test,” Dr. Charles Tator, the Toronto neurosurgeon and concussion expert, said in an interview. “I’m sufficiently optimistic that that is going to happen.”

Indeed, research by at least a couple of U.S. companies suggests the veil might be lifted by measuring for levels of protein in the blood, so-called biomarkers, that become elevated by brain trauma.

Such tests, if proven useful in clinical trials, could help doctors determine the severity of a concussion and monitor recovery.

There is also hope that a blood test could one day determine the existence of CTE, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease linked to repetitive head injury that has been found post-mortem in the brains of several former pro football and hockey players.

“I honestly would be disappointed if within the next three or four years we don’t have a biomarker for concussion,” said Dr. Robert Cantu, a Boston-area neurosurgeon, “just as I would be very disappointed if in the next three or four years we don’t have a biomarker developed for CTE. There are a number of things that have shown great promise to be useful.”

Dr. Tator said he was recently involved in publishing research that showed that an MRI can detect brain damage in patients who has suffered repeated concussions.

“That was a bit of a breakthrough,” Dr. Tator said.

But only one in what many hope will be a line of breakthroughs to come.

“Right now concussion is the invisible injury. We call it that. Patients and family are aware of that term. But we’re hoping with further research it’s not going to be an invisible injury,” Dr. Tator said. “We hope we’ll be able to show people, here’s your MRI, you can see this area of the brain isn’t working so well. That’ll be an important breakthrough.”

Protein levels in blood may be biomarkers that become elevated by brain trauma