- Title Information
- Title
- Cognitive Outcomes Post-TBI Recovery: Increased Vulnerability in Pre-menopausal Women
- Type of Resource (primo)
- text_resources
- Abstract
- Moderate to severe traumatic brain injury (msTBI) is a major cause of long-term disability, cognitive impairment, and increased dementia risk. The CAPCOG-TBI study investigates whether cerebrovascular dysfunction predicts cognitive and functional outcomes up to one year. Sex and hormonal status are also emerging as important modifiers of recovery. This sub-analysis examines whether menopausal status modifies early neurocognitive recovery.
Participants with msTBI were recruited within one-week post-injury from Texas Health Resources and Parkland Hospital and stratified into premenopausal women (n=9), postmenopausal women (n=4), and men (n=20), with menopause inferred by age. Cognitive outcomes were assessed at 3 months using the NIH Toolbox battery. Admission Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) scores indexed injury severity. Group comparisons were conducted via ANCOVA in R, controlling for GCS at admission.
The Dimensional Change Card Sort (DCCS) percentile was significantly lower, 20 points lower on average, in the pre-menopausal group after adjusting for GCS (p ≈ 0.027), suggesting a robust difference in executive-switching performance. Other cognitive domains were nonsignificant after controlling for GCS, implying unadjusted differences reflected baseline severity rather than true group effects.
While counterintuitive, these results reveal that pre-menopausal women may have a more challenging recovery post-TBI, potentially due to their increased reliance on estradiol for neuroprotection and the acute disruption of the HPG axis impairing cognitive recovery. Additionally, higher baseline cognitive function in pre-menopausal women may make subtle post-TBI deficits more detectable, and the timing of injury relative to hormonal and circulatory fluctuations can modulate neuro-inflammatory responses and recovery trajectories.
- Name
- Name Part
- Celine Wei
- Role
- Role Term (marcrelator)
(authorityURI="http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators", valueURI="http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators/aut")
- Author
- Name
- Name Part
- Danilo Cardim
- Role
- Role Term (marcrelator)
(authorityURI="http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators", valueURI="http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators/aut")
- Author
- Name
- Name Part
- Kan Ding
- Role
- Role Term (marcrelator)
(authorityURI="http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators", valueURI="http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators/aut")
- Author
- Origin Information
- Date Created
- 2025
- Subject (Local)
- Topic
- Traumatic brain injury
- Subject (Local)
- Topic
- Pre-menopause
- Genre
- posters
- Access Condition:
use and reproduction
- All rights reserved
- Access Condition:
rights statement
(href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/")
- In Copyright
- Access Condition:
restriction on access
- All Rights Reserved
- Identifier:
DOI
- 10.26300/77cx-3d02