# Biological Signal May predict Recovery After Childhood Brain Injury
A newly discovered biological signal in the blood coudl help health care teams and researchers better understand how children respond to brain injuries at the cellular level, according to our research in the Journal of Neurotrauma.
In the future, this information could help clinicians identify children who need more tailored follow-up care after a traumatic brain injury.
Basics of epigenetics
As part of our work as a nurse scientist and neuropsychologist studying traumatic brain injury, we wanted to look for biological markers inside cells that might help explain why some children recover smoothly after brain injury while others struggle.
To do this,we focused on DNA, the instruction manual of cells. DNA is organized into regions called genes, each of which codes for proteins that carry out different functions like repairing tissues.
While your DNA generally stays the same throughout your life, it can sometimes collect small chemical changes called epigenetic modifications. These changes act like dimmer switches, turning genes up or down without changing the underlying code.In general, dialing up the activity of a gene increases production of the protein it codes for, while dialing down the gene decreases production of that protein.
One common type of epigenetic modification is called DNA methylation. DNA methylation is not fixed but can rather change in response to what you eat, how you move your body or even how stressed you are. We wondered if these epigenetic changes might also change in response to brain injury in children.
Epigenetic changes in traumatic brain injury
To explore this idea, we enrolled nearly 300 children at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh in our study. Of these children, 189 had a traumatic brain injury serious enough to require at least one night in the hospital, while the others had broken bones but no head injury.
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