Recurrent head injury linked to affective dysregulation, impulse control

CHICAGO — A history of two or more head injuries was associated with mild behavioral impairment in older adults, according to a poster presentation at the 2022 American Neurological Association annual meeting.

Lisa N. Richey, BA, a research program coordinator at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and colleagues conducted a prospective study of 2,534 community-dwelling, older adults to determine whether recurrent head injuries could be linked with behavioral health.

“We found that a history of having two or more — so, repetitive traumatic brain injury — is associated with increased odds of having issues with regulating emotions and issues with impulsiveness,” Richey told Healio.

According to Richey, a single head injury did not yield significant clinical implications.

“It’s like a threshold association,” she said. “The second head injury is doing something to increase the odds of this happening.”

Specifically, older adults who had recurrent head injuries were more likely to have symptoms associated with affective dysregulation and impulse dyscontrol.

“The construct of mild behavioral impairment is a good thing to use in traumatic brain injury to look at neuropsychiatric symptoms,” Richey said.