Brent Masel, M.D., the medical director of the Brain Injury Association-America published a paper which called traumatic brain injury a chronic disease. In that paper, Dr. Masel outlined a list of medical conditions associated with traumatic brain injury and encouraged that a TBI be looked at, “not as an event, not as the final outcome, but rather as the beginning of a disease process.”

More recently, Charles Wilkinson, Ph.D. and Elizabeth A. Colasurdo, researchers with the Veterans Affairs Puget Sound Health Care System in Seattle issued a press release stating: “Although studies and civilians indicate a 25%-50% prevalence of hormonal deficiencies resulted from brain injury, surprisingly there is limited data on the prevalence and symptoms in military veterans.”

To address this, Doctor Wilkinson and his colleagues evaluated 27 veterans who had sustained one or more blast-induced mild traumatic brain injuries one year or more before the study; and 14 veterans who did not experience traumatic brain injury, to determine specific pituitary dysfunctions among the TBI veterans.,

The study found that 12 of the mild TBI group had hormone deficiencies, compared to 1 of the group who did not experience mild TBI. Growth hormone deficiency was found in 8 of those mild TBI; three had secondary adrenal deficiency and two had hypogonadism.

This study is further evidence that otherwise mild TBI’s can be the beginning of serious chronic injuries.