Abstract
Problems with executive cognitive function, including recent memory, concentration, word finding, confusion, decreased assimilation, and disorientation, can have a variety of sources of disease, including inflammation, metabolic disturbances, and degenerative processes that are typically found in diseases where chronic fatigue is present. The problems presented by multiple coexisting cognitive symptoms are finding: 1) a single diagnostic test that has a history of use by clinicians working with brain-injured patients, such as NeuroQuant (NQ); 2) that is affordable, accurate, and reliable to use as a measure of benefits, or lack of same; and 3) screening, causation, and sequential features of therapy. Furthermore, the complexity of brain injury shows us the limitations of human versus machine-based testing, with advances in transcriptomics leading the way in a new world of diagnostics and therapies that follow gene activation studies.
The objective of this report was to retrospectively look at results of the transcriptomic testing of white blood cells, combined with a brain volumetric imaging study, in an observational study to provide a basis to identify the specific causation of brain injury caused by exposure to the interior environment of water-damaged buildings (WDB). By comparing transcriptomic abnormalities with known volumetric patterns of injury to cortical grey matter, enlargement of superior lateral ventricles and atrophy of grey matter nuclei, we demonstrate the feasibility of treatment of brain injury employing noninvasive methods in preparation for novel treatments previously shown to be effective. We intend to use these tests sequentially in a before-and-after fashion to show correction of metabolic and inflammatory conditions found in chronic inflammatory response syndrome (CIRS) in a subsequent study.