**Transcript of Cyberseminar**

**Timely Topics of Interest**

**TBI: Screening and Evaluation of Headache and Endocrine Disorders**

**Presenters:  Elaine R. Peskind, MD; Charles W. Wilkinson, PhD**

**April 25, 2013**

**TBI: Screening and Evaluation of Headache and Endocrine Disorders**

**April 25, 2013**

*This is an unedited transcript of this session. As such, it may contain omissions or errors due to sound quality or misinterpretation. For clarification or verification of any points in the transcript, please refer to the audio version posted at www.hsrd.research.va.gov/cyberseminars/catalog-archive.cfm or contact: ralph.depalma@va.gov*

Moderator:We are now at the top of the hour so at this time I want to introduce our speakers; speaking first we have Dr. Elaine Peskind. She is co-director of the VA Northwest Network VISN 20 Mental Illness Research, Education and Clinical Center also known as MIRECC. A Friends of Alzheimer's Research Professor of Psychiatry at University of Washington School of Medicine, a staff psychiatrist at the Madigan Army Medical Center. Speaking next will be Dr. Charles Wilkinson. He is a research sociologist for geriatric research educational clinical center also known as GRECC and he is at the VA Puget Sound Healthcare System and a research Associate Professor Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine. 

I am very grateful to have both of our speakers joining us today. At this time I would like to turn it over to Dr. Peskind. 

Dr. Peskind:Molly, thank you for the invitation to do this webinar. I accidentally hung up while we were previously talking so I am hoping my slides have reappeared. I just want to say a very little bit about how I got interested in TBI; I have been an Alzheimer's researcher for the past 30 years and for the past 15 years or so research and combat trauma post traumatic stress disorder. The conduct of our active duty soldier study for combat trauma PTSD at Joint Base Lewis McChord I was seeing lots and lots of young soldiers with PTSD. In this study about 75% of them also had concommitant exposure to blast concussion that had the historic diagnosis of mTBI. Literally, they would, every single guy I would see -- I would see as many as 10 soldiers in a day they pull out these little spiral notebooks out of their shoulder patch pockets and write down everything I said. At some point I thought this was odd. I asked the young soldier, "Why are you writing everything down?" And he said if I don't write it down I won't remember. A light bulb went off over my head and I said we have a problem here. I got very interested in TBI. 

One of the common complaints that we found in these young soldiers was headache. Let's go on and talk here. I really want to make the point that blast concussion traumatic brain injury is really a unique and new phenomenon specific to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That is because improvised explosive devices are the weapons of choice for the insurgents and usually blast concussion exposure is a repetitive phenomenon in our current study of  multi modal neural imaging and spinal fluid spinal markers in mTBI the average number of blast exposures severe enough to cause symptoms consistent with the American Congress of Rehab Medicine diagnosis of mild traumatic brain injury is 14. And some have as many as 100 exposures that meet those criteria. 

There have been 2.4 million service members who have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. Of those approximately 20% return having sustained at least one deployment related mild traumatic brain injury. The majority of these mTBIs are the result of blast concussion, roughly 75%. Headache is very common. New onset particularly of migraine headache is very common and the prevalence of post traumatic headaches in these returning service members and veterans is approximately 40%. 

Let's talk about chronic post concussive headache. The international classification of headache disorders defines post traumatic headache as a secondary headache that is precipitated by head trauma. Although the strict criteria say that the headache has to occur within seven days in practice we are a lot more lenient about that and it is really new onset of headaches within months of the trauma. If these headaches persist for three months or more they are considered to be chronic. 

Let's talk about common co-morbidities that might increase the tendency for post traumatic headache. The tendency for these headaches to become chronic is increased by post traumatic stress disorder, depression, sleep deprivation which is common both in post traumatic stress disorder and also can be caused as a primary problem from head trauma and also female gender. 

In a recent cross sectional study of nearly 1,000 soldiers who have deployment related concussion performed by Theeler et al,  20% met criteria for chronic daily headaches meaning they had headaches 15 days or more of the month. This is about four or five holes higher than in the the general population and 66% or two thirds of these headaches had migraine features. 

Chronic migraine is considered to be one of the most disabling and difficult to treat of the headache syndromes. Overuse of analgesics, particularly opioid analgesics can cause or provoke superimposed rebound or medication overuse headaches. This happens particularly frequently with those that have headaches that are very frequent at baseline. Between 20 and 40% of patients with post traumatic headache have the superimposed medication overuse headaches. 

In civilian TBI post traumatic headache more likely tends to be tension type, migraine or mixed. However, in our military population these headaches are more likely to have migraine features. When I say migraine features we are talking about severe, often one sided headaches with light and sound sensitivity and sometimes nausea and they are very disabling. They result in significantly more impairment, functional impairment, more sick call days than other types of headaches. In one study 77% of migraine attacks interfere with duty performance on average of 2.5 days per month. 

Our colleague at Madigan Army Medical Center, Colonel Jay Ericson, did a retrospective chart review study of 100 soldiers who were seen in a neurology clinic and were treated with migraine prophylaxis for their chronic post traumatic headaches. Of these 100, 77, three fourths had blast concussion post traumatic headaches, 23 of them had non-blast or your typical impact post traumatic headache. In the blast group multiple concussions were significantly more common, 51% versus 23%. 

Doing this chart review he found that blast concussion migraine was usually responsive to acute abortive therapy with a tryptan with three fourths of patients reporting reliable relief within about two hours. The use of a tryptan for abortive migraine therapy seems to be equally effective in both blast and non-blast headache. However, compared to impact post concussive headaches blast induced post concussive migraine was poorly response to a number of standard migraine prophylactic strategies. The tricyclic amitriptyline and nortriptyline, the anticonvulsant topiramate and although there were relatively new patients treated with propranolol and the beta blocker propanolol and the anticonvulsant propanoate they all were poorly responsive in general to any of those treatments. I will show you the data on the next slide. 

With respect to headache days per month at baseline versus follow-up being a responder was defined as greater or equal of 50% decline in headache frequency in follow-up compared to the base line. 

In the blast post traumatic headache group you can see that there was very little change from base line to follow-up a small decrease in the number of headache days. And this was not a significant so 29% of those were responders. In the impact post traumatic headache group there was about a - there was a 41% decline and 57% were considered responders. So blast concussion post traumatic headaches were particularly unresponsive to the standard prophylactic migraine strategy. 

We ask the question because of the common co-morbidity of PTSD with sleep deprivation and because of our four-now successful, positive placebo controlled trials of prazosyn for post traumatic stress disorder we wondered whether prazosyn the alpha one blocker that has been so effective for PTSD trauma nightmares and sleep disturbance as well as total PTSD symptoms might be an effective strategy for treatment or prophylaxis of migraines. 

Robert Russ who is a neurologist and the director of VA neurology nationally, but also a clinical neurologist in Cleveland at the VA there used open label prozosyn in a very simple study it was a large open label case series to treat PTSD in Iraq and Afghanistan veterans with blast mild traumatic brain injury with post traumatic headache and they also had other post concussive symptoms as well. So again, prazosyn is a CNS active alpha-1 adrenoreceptor antagonist. It is the only one of the alpha-1 blockers that recently readily crosses the blood brain barrier. And again has been demonstrated effective for combat trauma PTSD nightmares, sleep disruption and for global clinical status and now for placebo controlled trials. 

So Bob Russ did a very simple study. He followed roughly 80 veterans who had headaches and PTSD, most of them had PTSD and he - so he started them with a single milligram of prazosyn at that time. He increased over a five week period to a total of 7 milligrams at that time and then four weeks later re-evaluated for his outcome measures. So again, this is open label treatment. This is not placebo control. So the usual caveats. 

There was a large reduction in the number of headaches per month; about two thirds reduction, nearly 3/4. There was a 50% decrease in headache intensity, daytime sleepiness decreased significantly and then he asked a very simple question, do you feel your sleep is restful and restorative. At base line 7% of these patients endorsed restful and restorative sleep. And at the end point 88% endorsed restful and restorative sleep. He also did a brief screening cognitive test, a Montreal cognitive assessment similar to the mini mental state the 30 point scale that evaluates the major cognitive domains. And at baseline the average score was 24 which was quite abnormal in young persons and at the end of the study it was 28. Whether all of these affects are purely affects on PTSD sleep and trauma nightmares we don't know. 

And then from our own recently completed controlled trial of prozasyn for PTSD trauma nightmares and global function and sleep disturbance. And active duty soldiers at Joint Base Lewis McChord is consistent with prazosyn having beneficial effects on post traumatic headache although it was not an intended outcome in the study. 

Let me tell you a little bit about the study - it was a parallel group placebo controlled trial with a one to one randomization ratio performed at Joint Base Lewis McChord in Tacoma, Washington. The subjects were active duty Iraq and Afghanistan soldiers with combat operations PTSD with a clinician administered PTSD scale greater than 50. And they had to have distressing trauma nightmares at least two nights per week. They have to have a total CAPS item nightmare score of five. The majority of participants, three quarters also had comorbid mild traumatic brain injury. And the combat theater in Iraq and Afghanistan essentially the combat exposure get you the one three fourths of the time get you the other. 

The study started off with a six week dose titration period. You have to always start prozasyn at a single milligram at a time and titrate up. It was a flexible dose titration strategy so we increase the dose and then related nightmares. The only way your dose didn't get increased to the next step was if you rated as markedly improved; literally, your nightmares were gone. So most people got to the maximum dose of 5 milligrams at 10 am and 20 milligrams at bed time. The total duration of the study was 15 weeks. The outcome measures were the total CAPS scores on the clinician-administered PTSD scale. The CAPS were current distressing item, the Pittsburgh sleep quality index, the clinical global impression of change that was anchored to function and sense of well-being. And also we evaluated for adverse events. I would say including headache here, but I will show you why on the next page. First we will go through the results. 

Here are the outcomes on our outcome measures here. Here are the results. You can see in the upper left-hand corner is the CAPS nightmare item with the robust improvement in the prozasyn group in blue and the people group in red having not much change. The upper right panel, the Pittsburgh sleep quality index again showing a robust improvement benefit for prozasyn. Clinical global impression of change on the lower left-hand panel showing that 54% of the prozasyn group were rated as responders and that was defined as being moderately or markedly improved in the clinical global impression of change. And only 27% were rated as responders in the placebo group. 

Then the 17 item total CAPS score on the right hand panel again showing benefit now for total nightmare - I'm sorry total PTSD symptoms. This remains significant even when you remove the nightmare item. 

Then because there are anticipated adverse events of prozasyn and this is a list of what they are we rated all of these at base line before randomization. It is counted as an adverse event. It had to be emergent or clinically worsened. So let's take a look. The usual things; we had two cases of patients who had brief syncope one was in the setting of physical exertion in hot weather and being dehydrated. Let's see, does anything else stand out? Nasal congestion is a pretty common side effect of prozasyn. The occasional palpitation especially during PT. And I highlighted headache you can see why. We actually had a lower incidence of headache in the prozasyn group. Substantially lower compared to the placebo group. We had one subject who had emergent or clinically worsening headache in the prozasyn group and the placebo group there were seven. 

Then because we rated the side effects, these anticipated adverse events at base line we were able to see what happened to them over the course of the study. In the placebo group 20% of subjects had improvement or resolution of headache. In the prozasyn group only 50% had improvements or resolution of headaches. It seemed to be particularly effective for women with migraine type headaches. Three of the four women who were assigned to prozasyn group who had headaches at baseline and three of the four women headaches were completely resolved. 

In conclusion, the results of these studies are providing a rationale for us for doing a randomized placebo controlled trial for prozasyn specifically for placebo controlled concussive migraine which we are in the process of doing. I am ready to take questions when Dr. Wilkinson finishes his presentation. 

Moderator:Thank you very much. At this time I will turn it over to Dr. Wilkinson. I'm sorry. I just realized I forgot to unmute you. My mistake. I will take care of that now. 

Dr. Wilkinson:Thank you very much for inviting me. Good morning or good afternoon depending on where you all are. I would like to describe some recent work of ours on endocrine disorders resulting from blast concussion. Specifically, pituitary dysfunction or hyper pituitarism. I will start by discussing the pituitary's vulnerability to head trauma. 

Moderator:I'm sorry to interrupt, can you click the button "show my screen"? 

Dr. Wilkinson:Oh, yes. So I haven't been on. Okay. I will start by discussing the pituitary's vulnerability and then the background and rationale for our work and the design and the results of the study. Along the way I will present the consequences of hypopituitarism particularly those related to behavior, cognition and mood. 

Moderator:Alright, it looks like we are going to take a question real quick from the audience. Would you like to read through it? 

Dr. Wilkinson:Me or the viewers? 

Moderator:Oh no, I can. How knowledgeable are you about endocrinology, please click the circle next to the answer that best describes your knowledge level. World expert, well versed, basic understanding or endo what? It looks like we have had half of our audience vote so far. We will give people just a few more seconds to get their responses in. We are already up to two thirds. Thank you for your responses, to the audience members, it really helps the presenters gear the presenting correctly. It looks like we have had 70% respond and the answers have stopped coming in. At this time I am going to close the poll and share the results. You should be able to see those Dr. Wilkinson, if you would like to talk through them real quick. 

Dr. Wilkinson:Okay. I can see that the vast majority is the level of basic understanding. That is perfect. And we have a couple of or a few world experts. Great. 

The pituitary which is often called the master gland because it regulates the secretions of the other major glands is located at the base of the brain. It is about the size of a garbanzo bean. The pituitary is very vulnerable to TBI because of its anatomical localization. It is attached to the hypothalamus by a very narrow stalk, it is about 2 to 3 mm in diameter. That stalk carries its neural and vascular supply from the brain. In addition to that the body of the pituitary is almost completely enclosed in a pocket in the sigmoid bone called the sella turcica or Turkish saddle. And because of the restriction of its movement by this bone it is subject to compression by a brain movement and edema. I should have aid the stalk itself is very susceptible to damage to acceleration and deceleration of the brain as a result of head trauma. And in addition to that the pituitary is susceptible pressure surges to the vasculature if the pressure wave impinges on the torso there can be large pressure surges through the vasculature and those can disrupt tissue in the pituitary or the brain for that matter. 

The usual characteristics in endocrine after TBI is that there are multiple transient endocrine abnormalities immediately afterwards stress responses in general. Then problems the endocrine problems generally resolve in the following months but in some individuals they do not resolve and often a smaller proportion of new dysfunctions can emerge. After six to 12 months of what I call PTHP or post traumatic hypo pituitarism it is generally considered a chronic position and relatively permanent. So those deficiencies that exist at that time are relatively permanent. Hypopituitarism is defined as deficient production of one or more of the pituitary hormones. It was first described in 1918 and the rest of the century it was pretty much ignored. There are only scattered reports in the literature it was considered very rare. Beginning in 2000 several studies have appeared and those have found a very high prevalence of hypopituitarism after TBI. 

This table shows the results of those studies and I wanted to point out that we are definitely concentrating on chronic hypopituitarism. Everything that I show is chronic hypopituitarism. These are persistent deficiencies. This slide shows the principal investigators the studies the years it was published, the number of patients and the percentage of hypopituitarism that was found. And you can see that the percentages here range widely from 5% to 90%. And the reason for this high variability is that a variety of screening criteria and methods of hormone measurement were used. About approximately half of these studies found a prevalence of 25 to 50%. That is actually an extraordinary level considering that the prevalence of hypo pituitarism in the general population is approximately 400ths of 1%. So even the 5% level is an extraordinary increase above the normal population. 

The consequences of PTHP are many. It has been associated with behavioral and cognitive deficits and reduction in quality of life and increased mortality. Many of the symptoms are overlapped with those of post-concussive syndrome and PTSD. The positive aspect of PTHP is that if the symptoms are due to hormonal deficiencies they can generally be treated successfully with replacement hormones. We feel that failure to screen for PTHP may result in inappropriate and ineffective treatment of these syndromes. As you all know, PTSD is very unresponsive or poorly responsive to treatment. Another poll question. 

Molly:The question is: Would you consider consulting an endocrinologist about chronic post concussive symptoms? The answer 1. is yes, 2. maybe it would depend on the symptoms and answer number 3 is a definitive no. It looks like already about 60% of our audience has voted and they are still streaming in. We will give people just a few more seconds to respond. Alright, it looks like we are up to a 75% response rate and the answers have stopped streaming in. I am going to go ahead and close that and share the results. Looks like we have 36% report yes, 64%, maybe it would depend on the symptoms and 11% say no. So thank you. 

Dr. Wilkinson:That is impressive as far as I am concerned. Hopefully, maybe I can increase those numbers for the yeses somewhat. 

So based on the background that I have given you, the rationale for our study was high prevalence of PTHP that has been shown in the studies of TBI from other causes and the fact that no one at that time had studied the effects of blast concussion on pituitary function and that there is no routine hormonal screening after TBI. And again, a considerable overlap in symptoms between PTHP and PTSD. 

So the questions we ask are whether blast concussion results in rates of PTHP that are similar to those of TBI from other causes and what pituitary hormone axes were most frequently affected. The sign was to measure hormones in blood samples from two groups of veterans both of which had been deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan. One group is a veteran who had experienced blast in TBI as Elaine mentioned, virtually all of these had multiple blast concussions. The second group, the controlled group were deployed veterans who were not blast exposed. In the preliminary data that I will show here that group is quite small, but it the results are very consistent and we measured basal levels of 12 pituitary and target-organ hormones in blood from these individuals  We used normal reference ranges for measurements of community control samples. 

# We determined the prevalence of abnormalities in each pituitary hormone in each group. The hormones measured the interior pituitary hormones were growth hormone and then its target organ hormone Insulin-like Growth Factor which is produced by the liver in response to the growth hormone. The gonadtropin luteinizing hormone and follicle stimulating hormone which regulate... luteinizing hormone primarily regulates the secretion of testosterone bythe testes, follicle stimulating hormone regulates spermatogenesis. Also, prolactin. Prolactin has significant effects on both reproductive and sexual function at either very low levels or very high levels of prolactin can be deleterious

Next pituitary hormone is ATCH which stimulates the secretion of cortisol by the adrenal cortex. TSH, thyroid stimulating hormone which stimulates the secretion of thyroxine from the pituitary. In addition to these six anterior pituitary hormones and four target organ hormones we also measure two hormones from the posterior pituitary. I should mention here that in the earlier studies of PTHP virtually all of them measured only anterior pituitary hormones. We measured the suppressin and oxytocin as well. 

This is a schematic showing there are anatomical differences in the location of the various cell types of the pituitary and they are consistent with the prevalence of specific hormone deficiencies both in the earlier studies and in our study. Growth hormone secreting cells the somatotrophs are located in the lateral wings of the pituitary where they are most susceptible to damage. The other extreme are the ACTH and TCH screening cells during the protected median ledge of the pituitary and prolactin and gonaditropin secreting cells are located throughout the pituitary or the intermediate level of vulnerability. 

Most people would assume that growth hormone deficiency is relatively unimportant in adults, but the affects of growth hormone deficiency are quite serious. They include depression, irritability, aggressiveness and social isolation, pain and lack of physical mobility, sleep disorders and there are cognitive impairments in multiple domains and there are detrimental effects on metabolism resulting in lipidemia, loss of bone and muscle, increased menopausity, lipidemia results in hypertension and significant increase in cardiovascular mortality and individuals with GHB have low scores on quality of life assessments. 

Excuse me, measurement of single growth hormone values during the day time are very poor measure of growth hormone deficiency because of the pattern of growth hormone secretion the levels are extremely low during the day and they are punctuated by sharp bursts of secretion. So single measurement doesn't provide any reliable information. However, IGF1 is a valuable indicator of growth hormone deficiency. In IGF1 even normal or elevated levels of IGF1 do not predict growth hormone deficiency well. It cannot exclude growth hormone deficiency. However, if IGF1s are significantly low that is a very strong indicator that growth hormone deficiency exists. This slide shows IGF1 concentration as a function of age and the red line on this slide is the age adjusted 10th percentile of IGF1 concentration of our reference control population. You can see IGF1 declines significantly with age. In some of the slides the yellow dots or the yellow circles are the data from our TBI group and the purple triangles are our data from our deployment control group. None of the deployment control group fell below our cut off line for presumptive hormone deficiency but five of the TBI group were below that line. 

The next data I would like to show are those related to hypogonadism. We had dual criteria for hypogonadism. First, the individuals had to have a testosterone concentration below the 5th percentile of our reference population shown by the red line. And either LH or FSH concentrations required to be below the 10th percentile of their respective reference groups. You can see in both groups there are values below the cut off lines but only the individuals indicated by the three green circles who are in the TBI group were below the cut off points in both hormones and indicative of probably hypergonadism. 

In measuring the - the reason for measuring the posterior pituitary hormones oxytocin and the suppressin is that their concentrations have shown to be related to aspects of mood and behavior. Oxytocin has gained the reputation in the popular press as the love hormone. It is released by social irrelevant challenges and the release continuates stress responses to those challenges. It is released in positive social interactions and mediates social support. It is linked to reduction of autonomic arousal in social situations. It has been implicated in social cognition and recognition of social signals. These studies - list represents studies in both humans and animals. The levels are also frequently very low in mental disorders including autism that are characterized by severe social disturbances. In our study we measured - we found four individuals of the 26 of the TBI group who were below the fifth percentile of our referenced oxytocin range. As in the other hormones I have presented none of the deployment control groups fell below this level. 

For the suppressin both extremely high and extremely low levels are related to significant clinical conditions. Low values are indicative of diabetes and insipidus, characterized by extreme thirst and secretion of very high volumes of very dilute urine. On the other side is SIADHD, abnormally high values consistent with sodium loss and can lead to life threatening hyponatremia. 

There is a large body of work that demonstrates increased anxiety and depression in relation to high suppressin levels in animal models. There have also been studies showing that high plasma and/or CSF levels of suppressin are associated with personality disorders and other psychiatric disorders and PTSD. Should make the caveat that these are all associational studies there is no cause and effect relationship that has been demonstrated. In our studies we have found two TBI subjects with very high levels of suppressin, two with very low; either above the 95th percentile or below the 95th percentile. 

In summary, 11 of 26 or 42% of veterans in our TBI group were found with at least one hormonal abnormality and none of the deployment control groups were found with any abnormality. As you can see here the abnormal values are highlighted in the yellow. Five individuals had IGF1 levels below the age adjusted 10th percentile - sorry, I'm going to back up. Sorry about that. Five individuals had IGF1 levels indicative of hormone growth deficiency. Three individuals had low LH and testosterone concentrations consistent with hypogonadism. Two of those individuals had abnormal prolactin levels, very low or very high. As I mentioned before either one can lead to disruption of sexual reproductive function. Two of those also were among the individuals with low IGF1 levels. Four individuals in the TBI group had extreme ABP levels and four had very low oxytocin levels. Also very interesting that two of the subjects with low suppressin also had low oxytocin levels suggesting the possibility that the neural connections to the posterior pituitary were disrupted. 

One last poll question. 

Moderator:Yes. We do have one last poll for our audience. Now, would you consider consulting an endocrinologist about chronic post concussive symptoms? Yes, maybe, it would depend on the symptoms or no. And we have already had half of our audience vote. Approaching 60%. The answers are still streaming in so we will give people a little more time. Looks like you have done some convincing throughout your presentation. We have had about 70% vote now and the answers have stopped coming in. I am going to go ahead and close it and share the results with you. 

Dr. Wilkinson:Very good. Very impressive. Thank you. Okay in summary - in summary 42% of our admittedly small group of veterans were found to have chronic hormonal abnormalities. As the song in the cities of civilian TBI at least with the anterior pituitary hormones the hormone deficiency and hypergonadism were most frequent. Again, a reminder that PTHP is associated with many of the symptoms that are similar to those of PTSD so we feel that regular screening for hypopituitarism after last TBI, especially when they are chronic symptoms that are lasting six months to a year longer. That screening shows promise for appropriately directing diagnostic and therapeutic alternatives that might not otherwise be considered and would markedly facilitate rehabilitation. 

This work was made possible by a large group of people including Elaine and the rest of my collaborators listed here, many staff members, not all of them are listed here and support from the Department of Defense and of course, the Department of Veterans' Affairs. 

To point out one consequence not only of our study but other work that is being done; the Department of Defense, the Defense Centers of Excellence has developed a set of clinical guidelines for neural endocrine disorder and along with that a reference card for physicians for diagnosis of neural endocrine disorder that part of that is shown here. And also some training slides for the diagnosis of neural endocrine disorder. Those are posted on the DCOE website and those have also been distributed - 

Moderator:I'm sorry to interrupt - we actually can't see your screen anymore. You got disconnected from the meeting can you possibly hit the link again and come on in. 

Dr. Wilkinson:That is very strange. 

Moderator:Sorry about that. 

Dr. Wilkinson:I lost it. I really lost the connection. 

Moderator:Okay well, people can refer to their handouts and you can continue going on. I will try to troubleshoot from my end. 

Dr. Wilkinson:I am back to the GoTo Webinar screen it says it should start in a few seconds is there a way I can get to it from there? 

Moderator:No you have to go back to the email I sent to you. 

Dr. Wilkinson:It is probably best just to - I have no idea what happened. 

Moderator:You can go ahead. 

Dr. Wilkinson:Those documents are available on the DCOE website which is listed on the very last slide and they have also been distributed to all of the practitioners in military health system. To me this is extremely reinforcing and I hope a huge step forward in the recognition of PTHP as a serious problem in veterans. Thank you very much. 

Moderator:Great. Thank you. For those of you that joined us after the top of the hour I do want to let you know to submit your questions or comments simply type it into the box on the control panel on the right hand side of your screen where it says ask a question to the presenter. We do have some pending already so we will get right into those. The first one that came in is for Dr. Peskind, great presentation. What was the timing of the faint due to prazosin? Why give a morning dose? 

Dr. Peskind:So prazosin is always started at a single milligram at that time, first of all, just to make sure you are using it safely. It is a - the drug was approved as an anti-hypertensive in the 70's it has been off patent since the 80s so it is very cheap. The reason it is not used for hypertension anymore is because it is really the world's worst anti-hypertensive. The only time it is a good anti-hypertensive is literally the first day you take it it is called the first dose effect. So we always start with a single milligram at bed time. Generally people are going to have problems at low dose. So once you start increasing the dose it actually tends not to be a problem. This particular soldier was dehydrated in the setting of having a GI illness and then went to a physical training and worked out very hard in hot weather. It certainly was not expected. Then you have to obviously caution your patients to stay well hydrated and then not to get up suddenly that is usually enough of a caution to prevent syncope. 

Why do we give the morning dose? Because our first three placebo controlled trials using only an evening dose we did not have a robust effect on total PTSD symptoms. It worked very well for night time symptoms of trauma nightmares or sleep disturbance but wasn't as effective for daytime hyper arousal symptoms. When we add the normal dose, we have a titration schedule if you would like that you can email me at peskind@uw.edu and I would be happy to send you how to titrate. But the morning dose which is a fraction of the night time dose, usually by 25% and we do this gradually in titration it is beneficial for daytime hyper arousal and experiencing symptoms. So the usual startle, hyper vigilance, flashbacks they have are usually rare, all the daytime symptoms of arousal and reexperiencing. That is why we now use a 10:00 in the morning morning dose. Prozasin is a drug with a relatively short half life of less than eight hours. It is used for hypertension or benign prosthetic hypertrophy it is a BID to TID drug that is why we give a day time dose. 

Moderator:Thank you for that response. As I am going through the questions I did actually just delete someone's. So if you just got the message that your question was deleted, please do write it back in. I apologize for that. And we have plenty of other pending questions. Let me get to the next one real quick. Next question. 

Dr. Wilkinson:I did get back on the webinar. I don't know if it is worth putting any slides back on or not. 

Moderator:Oh. Well, let's try it real quick. One second. We do appreciate everybody waiting for us. Charles, if you do see the pop up go ahead and click that. 

Dr. Wilkinson:Okay this is the last slide with the information I mentioned. Sorry. 

Moderator:Great. We will get back to the Q&A now. This last question I am not sure which presenter it came in for but it is - let's see, can our PACK generalist just order the screening test? How much would it cost? 

Dr. Wilkinson:I assume that is for me. Not - well, part of the issue, part of the problem with this area at present is there is no fully accepted criteria for screening. Most of the deficiencies can be determined by measuring basal level hormones. Even there there are differences in cut offs in different labs of course. The other problem is that growth hormone deficiency especially is considered necessary to use a provocative test at this point. IGF1 can be useful but you can miss a lot of deficiencies that way. Provocative test that is most commonly used is insulin tolerance test which results in very low glucose levels and requires intense medical supervision. It is also contrarily indicated after head injuries. So there are other possible provocative tests that can be used. We are using glycogen stimulation tests which has the same effect of stimulating growth hormone secretion so you can determine how responsive the system is. I guess the short answer is no. There is nothing standard way of diagnosing these. You can request the hormone levels from your clinical lab, but then without some sort of standard basis interpreting those levels might be difficult. 

Dr. Peskind:Can I toss in the clinicians point of view here? What I do with my patients is first of all, ask about symptoms. You want to ask about symptoms of hypothyroidism and about sexual function. We are seeing young men with hypothyroidism. It is pretty common as a disorder in young women but you hardly ever see it in young men, so I would ask about constipation, cold intolerance, changes in their hair and skin, fatigue and screen for it. In general in psychiatric populations if a person has depression we usually screen for TSH anyway. Also, ask about sexual function. We see lots and lots of young men with erectile dysfunction, not common in young men. I would have a low index of suspicion and ask about these things. And for what you order for testosterone is both total testosterone and pre and weekly balance testosterone. 

Dr. Wilkinson:Thank you, Elaina. I wanted to make a point which I didn't in the talk that all of what I am presenting are hormonal screening data. They definitely are not clinical diagnosis. For any of these apparent hormone abnormalities obviously the individual would have to have a clinical evaluation. 

Dr. Peskind:I recently got an email from a clinician out in a CBOC that he heard me give a talk which I just mentioned 42% of our veterans I was really talking about TBI that 40% of our veterans had abnormalities at least one endocrine hormone and he said he has started screening and has already seen three veterans with deficiencies. He didn't say specifically which ones, but he has been doing it and has seen veterans who have it. 

Dr. Wilkinson:I have also heard a lot of anecdotal reports from individuals treating veterans of a high frequency of hypogonadism. I think that is a very serious concern. 

Dr. Peskind:I think that is very common. We have to be not only worried about their sexual function and that part of quality of life, but also these are young men maybe who have not had their families about fertility. 

Molly:Thank you both for those replies. We do have about 10 pending questions. The next one - which lab work would you recommend for screening an endo workup for mTBI prior to endocrinology referral if indicated? 

Dr. Peskind:I think we probably just more or less answered that question. 

Moderator:Okay. No problem. Let's see - next and should we be you may have already answered this - should we screen before consulting and if so which labs? 

Dr. Peskind:I would say the minimum is to screen for thyroid function and gonadal function. 

Moderator:Okay - is there a relationship - 

Dr. Wilkinson:Probably one of the most straight forward - if LH FSH and either LH or FSH and testosterone are low I think I would definitely consult an endocrinologist. 

Moderator:Great. Is there a relationship between convulsive disorders and PTHP? 

Dr. Wilkinson:That I do not know. Elaine, do you have any information? 

Dr. Peskind:I think what I would say about that is that if the convulsive disorder is due to traumatic brain injury than I would say yes. I would screen. If not, I really don't know. 

Moderator:Thank you. Can you clarify that it is mTBI not just moderate or severe TBI that needs to be considered for screening and treatment? 

Dr. Wilkinson:Yes. 

Dr. Peskind:You really think so? I mean I think - I think we just know less about moderate to severe. 

Dr. Wilkinson:Elaine, all of the original studies were on moderate to severe TBI. There is some feeling that hypopituitarism is related to the severity of the injury but most of the studies that have looked at that have found no relationship. Again, except for our study all of the studies were of moderate to severe mTBI. And again, those were not blast related studies. This was really the first demonstration of hypopituitarism after mild TBI and the first one after blast concussion. 

Dr. Peskind:Charles, I think we are basically saying the same thing that moderate to severe TBI doesn't mean that you don't have a pituitary dysfunction. 

Dr. Wilkinson:I'm sorry I thought you were saying - 

Dr. Depalma:Can I jump in? It is Dr. Depalma. I'm sorry I wasn't there to introduce you. I heard the whole session, which was just superb. The conventional wisdom neurosurgically is that skull fractures and skull base fractures with mild and severe TBI are characteristic of endocrine disorders. The observation that mild TBI due to blast is a really novel one coming out of your work which is quite a step forward. 

Dr. Wilkinson:Thank you. 

Dr. Peskind:Thank you Ralph. 

Dr. Wilkinson:If I can just address one more response to that - I think part of the reason for that is that a blast is such an unusual type of injury different than other forms of TBI. I think because of the multiple directions of impact I think the damage to the pituitary is likely to be possibly even more than other kinds of brain injuries. 

Moderator:Thank you. The next question, I am not sure who this one is geared towards, in your patients what was the type of injury - impact, non-impact blast, rotation? 

Dr. Wilkinson:It is almost all blast injuries or almost all blast injuries are results from multiple causes. If they occur in closed spaces there is reflection of the blast pressure waves, the impact from multiple directions, there is often shrapnel involved, heat, intense heat, often in a closed space especially there is going to be an impact in addition. There is almost no pure blast injury. Elaine, do you agree with that? 

Dr. Peskind:Yes. Specifically, our subjects, I can tell you exactly what our criteria were - to qualify for the study you had to have at least one blast exposure that met ACRM criteria for mild TBI with respect to acute symptoms. As I said already, most of them had multiple blasts with an average of 14 that met those criteria. In addition, I think it is really impossible to say that you have a veterans or service members who have pure blast injury. Many of our veterans were former high school athletes. I think military service selects for people who are physical. And then the usual lifetime events, motor vehicle accidents, falls, mixed martial arts, combative. The criteria of the study is you had to have at least one blast. 

Moderator:Thank you for that reply. Both obesity and opiate analgesics can lower testosterone levels, did you control for this? 

Dr. Wilkinson:We did not control. We are exclusion criteria were I guess I would say very mild because we wanted to make it a real world situation. We did document all medications that were used. Most medications were not excluded. Also we did not exclude individuals with PTSD because of the high comorbidity. We did not exclude opiates. 

Dr. Peskind:I would say that we did restrict BMI however, because this study also involved lumbar puncture we had a maximum BMI that would exclude people who are really obese. 

Moderator:Thank you both for those replies. Has this research been published Wilkinson is the reference on something listed. 

Dr. Wilkinson:Yes, it has been published. It is in Frontiers in Neurology, it is an open access publication and the reference is on the final slide. 

Dr. Peskind:And for the slides I presented there are references on the slide for all the things that were published. 

Moderator:Excellent. Thank you. We just have a few more pending questions. Also, some of your men you called "normal testosterone may have had low bioavailable T. Did you measure HSBG and calculate bioavailable T? 

Dr. Wilkinson:That is an excellent question. No we didn't. We measured only total testosterone. It is an excellent question. 

Moderator:Thank you. Is there a difference in testing a woman veteran with TBI versus a male veteran with TBI? 

Dr. Wilkinson:Obviously, the hormone profiles are very different and we have because of the relatively very low number of women with TBI we just have now been able to get any significant number of subjects volunteering. Again, I don't think you can compare them at all directly. I think you have to focus specifically on women which Elaine is focusing on both genders in a study of sports injuries. 

Dr. Peskind:And I have to say that we really expected we would get at least a few women in the study, but we have not had a woman referred yet. Most of our subjects in the study come from combat military occupational specialties or MOS' most of them are infantry, combat engineers, explosive ordinance disposal and MPs. About a quarter of MPs are women so we thought there would be at least a few women but we have not had any referred yet. 

Moderator:Thank you for that reply. That was our last pending question. At this time I would like to give you guys a chance for any concluding comments. Would you like to start, Elaine? 

Dr. Peskind:I think as a clinician I would like to improve people's quality of life, obviously, and make our veterans and service members as functional as possible. So I think having a low index of suspicion and to ask you have had headaches, what are they like? Are you having problems with sexual function? Have you had those symptoms consistent with hypothyroidism and to have a low index of suspicion for needing to do something about this. 

Moderator:Thank you. Dr. Wilkinson? 

Dr. Wilkinson:I would just like to say that I'm really grateful for the opportunity to present this data. I think the problem of PTHP is highly prevalent and very serious condition that can 

be treated generally successfully and I just am grateful for the opportunity to get the word out. I think it is a very underappreciated condition right now. So thank you. 

Moderator:We appreciate you both lending your expertise to the field. I have a couple of important announcements for our attendees. Number one, please do join us for the last TBI session in this series. It will take place on May 13. It is about technology advances in diagnosis of diffusion tensor imaging. You can go to the HSR&D cyber seminar catalog to register for that. Furthermore, as you complete the feedback survey for this please do have it reflect the content that was presented and not the technical hiccups. It looks like the internet did go down for just a moment. So once again, I want to thank our attendees for joining us. I want to thank Dr. Ralph Depalma for organizing this mini-series and I would like to thank our two speakers for lending their expertise. And this does conclude today's HSR&D cyber seminar. 

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