brainWAVES The Newsletter of the Brain Foundation
Winter 2015
MAJOR RESEARCH GIFT Congratulations Dr Neil Spratt, University of Newcastle
The Board of the Brain Foundation recently announced a major research gift, to the value of $300,000 over a three year period, to go to research that exhibited great potential for improved patient outcomes.
Dr Neil Spratt with Brain Foundation Secretary General, Gerald Edmunds at ANZAN.
We received many competitive applications Australia wide, posing a challenge for our Scientific Committee to make a selection. We would like to thank the North West Committee of the Brain Foundation (organisers of the annual Tamworth Fair) for their very generous contribution to this award.
Congratulations to Dr Neil Spratt who was awarded this significant grant, formally announced at the Annual Neurology Conference in Auckland during May.
Major Research Gift – Lay Summary
A new understanding of increased pressure within the skull in brain diseases
The Brain Foundation is Australia’s only research organisation that independently awards grants to all areas of brain disorder and disease.
The skull encases and protects the brain, but after injury, increasing pressure within the skull can reduce blood flow and worsen injury. As occurs elsewhere in the body, when the brain is injured (from e.g. trauma, stroke or bleeding around the brain) swelling occurs.
With the government cutting available medical research funding and with brain disease receiving less than 5% of this funding, we are now more important than ever.
Because the skull is basically a ‘closed box’ this swelling can cause a pressure rise. This has been recognised as a problem for more than a century. However, we have made recent experimental discoveries that show that pressure rises even after small stroke without noticeable brain swelling. We were suspicious that this pressure rise may be related to increases in the volume fluid around the brain – the cerebrospinal fluid. We found that there is a substance within this fluid that can trigger the pressure rise.
Dementia (including Alzheimer’s) alone, is the second leading cause of death in Australia. Dementia is not a natural part of ageing. Many diseases can cause dementia. Research is the only way we can understand the causes and identify strategies for prevention and treatments. And this is only one disease. There are hundreds more – Brain Tumours, Traumatic Injury, MND, Migraine & Headache, Stroke, Aneurysms, Parkinson’s and Dystonia to name some better known ones.
Excitingly, our experimental studies also show that the pressure rise can be completely prevented by a short duration of body cooling. Dangerous pressure rises are also an important feature of multiple other
Dr Neil Spratt at the University of Newcastle
brain diseases, and existing treatments are limited. As in stroke, causes other than brain swelling have not generally been considered. In this project we will determine the best way to apply cooling, as a precursor to clinical trials; we will explore the mechanisms causing the rise, in order to develop additional therapies; and we will determine whether this newly identified mechanism contributes to pressure rise in other brain disorders. I would like to thank the Brain Foundation for the opportunity to pursue this exciting research.
If you or a family member were to become afflicted by any one of these diseases, wouldn’t you want a successful treatment option? Help us to find them.
Contact the Brain Foundation PO Box 579, Crows Nest NSW 1585 Telephone: 02 9437 5967 or 1300 886 660 Email: info@brainfoundation.org.au Visit our websites brainfoundation.org.au and headacheaustralia.org.au