There is concern over the long-term brain health of military and ex-military personnel, both in Australia and overseas. It is increasingly recognised that exposure to repeated brain injury through blasts, combat training and other aspects of military service may be a risk factor for long term brain dysfunction.  Do these brain injuries cause long-term organic brain disease in Australian veterans?  If so, how common are they and how do we treat them? Only through examining the brains of generous donors after death will we get answers to these questions.

What is the AVBB trying to achieve?

We do not currently know what sort of brain pathology is found in some Australian ex-military personnel, or how common it is. Organic brain diseases such as interface astroglial scarring (IAS), diffuse axonal injury (DAI), chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), and other diseases related to mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) have been identified in veterans from other countries. A definitive diagnosis of many brain diseases, including IAS and CTE, can only be made after death with examination of the whole brain.

The primary goal of the AVBB is to confirm the existence (and evaluate the prevalence) of IAS, CTE and associated pathologies (such as blood vessel and white matter injury) in Australian ex-military personnel and make this information available to the public and to policy makers. The other main goal of the AVBB is to facilitate research into the long-term effects of concussion, blast overpressure injuries and other trauma on the brain, with a view to developing new means of diagnosis,  prevention, and treatment.

Brain disease diagnosis

Brains that are donated to the AVBB will undergo a comprehensive clinical neuropathological examination and the results will be made available to family or loved ones via a nominated doctor.

Brain disease research

Brain tissue from donors is kept and stored in a way that will facilitate research into brain diseases for many decades to come. Research being pursued by the AVBB involves understanding the full impact of head injury, including blast injury, on the human nervous system. We would like to unravel the impact of genetic factors as well as environmental factors in modifying disease risk. We hope our research will lead to better prevention strategies, tests to diagnose these diseases in living people, and ultimately treatments for these conditions.