Investigating the Role of Traumatic Brain Injury as a Risk Factor for
Frontotemporal Lobar Degeneration
 
   Lead Investigator:    Edmond Teng
   Institution      :    West Los Angeles VA/UCLA
   E-Mail           :    eteng@ucla.edu
   Proposal ID      :    314


   Publications:


1  Deutsch M, Mendez M, Teng E
   Medical risk factors for frontotemporal degeneration: Analysis of the NACC Uniform Dataset
   Abstract  Neurology,82:S58.002,2014,

   PUBLISHED



2  Deutsch MB, Mendez M, Teng E
   The Association Between Frontotemporal Degeneration and Traumatic Brain Injury
   Abstract  Am J Neurodegener Dis,3:189,2014,

   PUBLISHED



3  Deutsch MB, Mendez MF, Teng E
   Interactions between traumatic brain injury and frontotemporal degeneration
   Journal Article  Dement Geriatr Cogn Disord,39:143-153,2015,PMC4427348

   PUBLISHED





   Proposal Description:
   An increasing body of literature suggests that traumatic brain injury (TBI) may represent a significant risk factor for many neurodegenerative diseases.  TBI has been most extensively studied in Alzheimer???s disease (AD).  Previous meta-analyses have suggested an average increased odds ratio (OR) of 1.6 for developing AD after TBI across multiple studies.  There have been only two studies investigating the possible association between TBI and frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD), but those studies reported ORs of 3.3 to 4.4 for developing FTLD after TBI, suggesting that TBI may be more strongly associated  with FTLD than with AD.  However, both of these studies relied on clinical     diagnostic criteria for FTLD and did not include pathological confirmation. The reliance on purely clinical criteria may complicate these analyses, since direct damage from TBI disproportionately involves the frontal and temporal lobes and could result in a clinical picture similar to FTLD.  Furthermore, our   group???s recent analyses of NACC pathological data suggest that a significant proportion of patients with clinical diagnoses of FTLD have other underlying neuropathological diagnoses.  Therefore, the specific role of TBI as a risk factor for FTLD remains uncertain.  We plan to use clinical data from the      Uniform Data Set (UDS) to clarify the role of TBI as a risk factor for FTLD vs. AD, and to investigate the subset of subjects with both UDS and Neuropathology Database (NPD) data to confirm that TBI is associated with a greater likelihood of primary FTLD neuropathology.  The specific aims of the current proposal are as follows:                                                                                                                                                         1. Characterize the ORs for mild, moderate, and severe TBI in FTLD relative to age-, education-, and gender-matched AD and normal control subjects.  We will compare the prevalence and severity of p