| Budget Amount *help |
¥2,200,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,200,000)
Fiscal Year 2002: ¥600,000 (Direct Cost: ¥600,000)
Fiscal Year 2001: ¥1,600,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,600,000)
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| Research Abstract |
Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS) is the most common cause of death or serious neurological injury characterized by intracranial hemorrhage and progressive brain atrophy, resulting from child abuse. However, it is still unknown whether the characteristic lesions, such as acute subdural hematoma, ocular hemorrhage and cerebral atrophy are caused by shaking head alone. In this study, we developed a infant rat model of SBS to investigate the pathophysiological mechanisms underlying the brain damage. When heads of 3 or 4 week old rats with accelerometers were violently shaken 300 times/min at the acceleration of 10G for 10 minutes, the animals developed serious cyanosis and apnea, and about 20% of them died. Although decrease in the blood oxygen level measured immediately after shaking was transient and recovered about 10 minutes later, decline in the cerebral oxygen level and cerebral blood flow persisted for 30 minutes or longer. Five 6 day old rats were shaken for three consecutive days, and t
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hree weeks after that, the body weight and brain weight of them were significantly lower than those of controls. Frozen sections of brains that had been kept for three weeks after shaking were stained with HE and Fe and immunohistochemical staining, ABC method (antiGFAP, anti β APP). In three cases of the shaken group, mild subarachnoid hemorrhage were noticed. However, no other abnormalities including parenchymal hemorrhage and infarction were noted in the brain and cervical spinal cord. Neither did the immunohistchemical staining reveal any abnormalities such as reactive astrocyte and axonal degeneration. Although this study failed to find a pathological conclusion as to if brain damage is caused by shaking alone, further investigation is required since some kind of abnormalities might occur in the brain, judging from decrease in the brain weight. In addition, it is strongly suggested that hypoxia may be a very real secondary insult in SBS, which serves to exacerbate brain damage due to the primary mechanical injury of shaking. Less
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