Transforming Research and Clinical Knowledge in TBI

Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is a condition, not a one-time event. Effective treatment of TBI represents a great unmet need in public health. In 2013, approximately 2.8 million TBI-related emergency department (ED) visits, hospitalizations, and deaths occurred in the United States. TBI is a contributing factor in a third of all injury-related US deaths. An estimated 3.2 to 5.3 million people live with the long-term physical, cognitive, and psychological health disabilities of TBI, with annual direct and indirect costs estimated at over $76 billion. Although we are gaining ground in our understanding of the pathophysiology of TBI, these advances have failed to translate into a single successful clinical trial or treatment.

The NINDS-funded, multicenter Transforming Research and Clinical Knowledge in Traumatic Brain Injury (TRACK-TBI) study aims to change this. In collaboration with expert public-private partners, we have reached our enrollment goal of 3,000, having collected and analyzed detailed clinical data on subjects at 18 U.S. sites, across the injury spectrum, along with CT/MRI imaging, blood biospecimens, and detailed clinical outcomes. This rich and diverse precision medicine dataset will reside in a publicly accessible infrastructure of integrated databases, imaging repositories, and biosample repositories – a true TBI Information Commons. Our high quality and fully integrated TBI-Common Data Element dataset will provide a global platform to connect TBI’s best scientists.

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