Study: Bomb blasts may cause early aging in brains of troops

Gregg Zoroya | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption VA studies effects of brain injuries on vets The VA in Boston has a research program called Tracts where they have gathered together hundreds of veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan to research on the effects of things such post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury.

VA scientists have discovered signs of early aging in the brains of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans caught near roadside bomb explosions, even among those who felt nothing from the blast.

Years after coming home from war, veterans are showing progressive damage to the brain's wiring, according to a study published online Monday in Brain, A Journal of Neurology.

"Generally as we age, the connections (in the brain) deteriorate. But with those people with blast exposure it appears as though it's happening faster," said Benjamin Trotter, a bio-medical engineer with the Department of Veterans Affairs and lead author of the study.

Regina McGlinchey, a Harvard Medical School professor of psychology, VA scientist and study co-author, said the concern is that "what we generally see in older people in terms of declines in executive function, memory and planning would be happening at an earlier age."

Equally troubling is the lack of awareness of a blast injury. Many veterans studied said they never felt concussion-like symptoms such as dizziness, headaches or loss of consciousness. Others complained of those symptoms, but eventually saw them go away and military doctors concluded they had fully recovered.

Yet in both cases, brain scans years later showed signs of degeneration and early aging.

If symptoms of Alzheimer's disease or other dementia-like illnesses appear five or 10 years earlier in a large group of people, "this would have tremendous consequences for society," said William Milberg, a Harvard Medical School professor of psychology, VA scientists and study co-author. "We would have to figure out on a much larger scale ways of taking care of people."

The results expand on VA research published in November that reported a lack of communication between areas of the brain according to scans taken of troops who had been within 30 feet of an explosion.

"The most important message of these two studies is that they show for the first time in a large cohort of (Iraq and Afghanistan) veterans that exposure to explosions in combat affects the brain whether or not the soldier showed symptoms of a concussion at the time of the explosion," Milberg said.

An estimated 2.7 million Americans served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nearly 1.9 million are now veterans, about 60% of whom have or are receiving VA treatment, according to the agency.

An undetermined number of Americans were exposed to up to 47,000 IED bomb attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the U.S. military's Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization.

More than 3,000 troops were killed by IEDs in Iraq and Afghanistan and 10 times that number required medical treatment.

Many troops wearing body armor and traveling in armored vehicles reported getting "blown up," or surviving bomb blasts that occurred close by. Many veterans say that over the course of several deployments the number of explosions they survived rose into double digits.

John Cove, 41 — an Army reservist from Leicester, Mass., who served a year in Iraq — suffered a concussion during a 2008 training exercise in the U.S. when a simulated bomb exploded just a few feet from him. "You could say I was dazed and confused, walking around kind of blurry-eyed," Cove said.

He is among 450 veterans and servicemembers in the New England area who agreed to participate in the VA's study on traumatic brain injury and stress disorders, from which data were collected for the study released Monday.

Cove said the results of the study are sobering for soldiers like him who have been impacted by a blast.

"I kind of figured eventually I'd get to the point where I'm not going to remember much, cause I'm already starting to have memory loss," Cove said. "I get angry. I get frustrated. I have outbursts. I'm on medication to help me with my moods."