Research links TBI and gut inflammation

Research has linked gut inflammation to traumatic brain injury that can show up in as little as two hours following the injury.

An article on Women’s Radio reports it is vital to make sure to add in gut support to heal the digestive system with vitamins following a brain injury, including a concussion.

Supplements to include:

The research Women’s Radio is referring to can be found in the Journal of Neurotrauma. An article about the study called Traumatic Brain Injury and Intestinal Dysfunction: Uncovering the Neuro-Enteric Axis, explains how a TBI can lead to multiple physiological complications, including gastrointestinal dysfunction.

“TBI can induce an increase in intestinal permeability, which may lead to bacterial translocation, sepsis, and eventually multi-system organ failure. However, the exact mechanism of increased intestinal permeability following TBI is unknown,” the article reads. “We hypothesized that expression of tight junction protein ZO-1 and occludin, responsible for intestinal architectural and functional integrity, will decrease following TBI and increase intestinal permeability.”

Occludin is a protein that in humans is encoded by the  OCLN  gene. It’s located at the  tight junctions. Occludin also plays an important role in keeping cancer cells from spreading. The C-terminus of occludin is important in receiving and transmitting cell survival signals.

In standard cells, loss or disruption of occludin and other tight junction proteins leads to initiation of cell death. Studies involving high levels of expression of occludin in cancer cells have shown that occludin mitigates several important cancer proliferation properties.

The presence of occludin decreased cellular invasiveness. How occludin prevents the progression of cancer is not known, but it has been shown that cancer progression is linked to the loss of occludin or the silencing of the OCLN gene.

In the study, mice underwent a weight drop TBI model following anesthesia.

“ Brain injury was confirmed by a neurologic assessment and gross brain pathology. Six hours following injury …Whole ileum extracts were used to measure expression of tight junction proteins ZO-1 and occludin by Western blot,” the article reads. “TBI caused a significant increase in intestinal permeability. … An increase in intestinal permeability corresponds with decreased expression of tight junction proteins ZO-1 and occludin following TBI.”

Expression of intestinal tight junction proteins may be an important factor in gastrointestinal dysfunction following brain injury.

Read the full study here.