Select campus:UKDubai
University of Birmingham
Menu

About us

The Translational Brain Science Research Group, led by Professor Alex Sinclair, investigate a range of impacts on the function and physical health of the brain, with a programme of research which aims to deliver improvements in the care of patients.

Our Aims

Working with collaborators locally, nationally and internationally on innovative studies, they seek to understand causes of illness, and develop new treatments, assess mechanisms, and translate knowledge into clinical services to improve the lives of those with brain injury or disease.

Working with collaborators locally, nationally and internationally on innovative studies, they seek to understand causes of illness, and develop new treatments, assess mechanisms, and translate knowledge into clinical services to improve the lives of those with brain injury or disease.

What is Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension (IIH)?

Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension (IIH) is a neurological condition marked by increased pressure within the skull, yet its exact cause remains unclear. Risk of vision loss is a concern due to pressure on the visual nerve, however headaches are experienced by up to 95% of patients and it is headache that most significantly impacts quality of life.

The mechanisms underlying these headaches are still uncertain, which has resulted in a lack of targeted treatments. Headaches experienced by individuals with IIH often resemble migraines, and some small trials have shown effectiveness of migraine drugs in relieving these headaches.

This led us to hypothesize that there might be a common cause behind headaches from high pressure in the brain and migraines. We are using models of raised pressure to explore features of headaches including pain behaviour, alteration in brain activity and blood flow to the brain.

Civilians and military to take part in major study to improve concussion prognosis

Experts at the University of Birmingham and the Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre, in collaboration with the Defence Medical Services, are set to lead a UK consortium carrying out a major study aimed at identifying new ways to accurately predict whether patients will develop long-term complications as a consequence of concussion.

Transcript

Professor Alex Sinclair: Head injury is the commonest cause of death and disability in people aged under 40. Mild traumatic brain injury, sometimes called ‘concussion’, accounts for 1.2 million hospital visits each year in the UK. Now, although we call it ‘mild’, it leads to disproportionate impact on future health, and this is echoed by Headway, the brain injury charity. Peter McCabe, the Chief Executive, has added his support, and commented: “We know that even a seemingly minor head injury can have a major impact on a person’s life.”

Now, the consequences of these mild traumatic brain injuries are profound, with 3 in 10 not able to work at 12 months. The long-term effects include: post-traumatic headache, memory disfunction, and poor mental health, with post-traumatic stress disorder in some, as well as balance issues. Returning to work, to sport, to military duty, is not possible in up to a third in the UK. Now there are many causes of traumatic brain injury: road traffic accidents, assault, falls, sports-related head injuries—and, in military personnel (both in peace and even more so during conflict), head injury is common. But identifying those most at risk of these disabling consequences is currently not possible. So, this UK research programme is the first of its kind. We are collaborating closely with our colleagues from the Ministry of Defence.

Air Vice-Marshall Rich Withnall QHS: I am delighted that the Defence Medical Services, including the Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre at Stanford Hall, will be working hand-in-glove with class-leading civilian colleagues and the National Rehabilitation Centre Programme. I fully support this ground-breaking research, which I am confident will lead to significant clinical innovation to benefit military and civilian patients and have translational positive impact for sporting activities from grassroots to elite levels.

Alex: This programme of work brings together an outstanding multidisciplinary team of researchers from around the UK, coupled with top UK innovation. The study is designed to identify ground-breaking evidence to inform swifter diagnosis, swifter treatment, and enhance long-term management that will benefit across the board, from military personnel to civilians and sports-related brain injury. The study will also have relevance to military veterans with mild traumatic brain injury, by providing indicators of head injury and a focus for future care. Our vision is to identify clinically relevant, practical approaches that can be moved directly into patient care.

  • Long-term impact

    Raised pressure is the brain is also common after a traumatic brain injury, and we are exploring the mechanisms and alterations to the brain which occur after a mild traumatic brain injury and developing prognostic models to determine which patients are more likely to develop long-term disabilities due to persistent headaches, memory disturbances and poor mental health.

University of Birmingham research is set to boost astronaut health for future space missions

Watch the University of Birmingham’s Professor Alex Sinclair and Miss Susan Mollan, of University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, explain their new study, funded by the UK Space Agency and being done on collaboration with NASA, which is focused on a condition called Space flight-Associated Neuro-ocular Syndrome (SANS), which can have severe consequences for astronauts including blindness.

Transcript

There is an unexpected issue with long duration space flight, astronauts risk losing vision.

My name is Professor Sinclair, I work as a researcher at the Institute of Metabolism and Systems Research at the University of Birmingham, where I run a translational research group looking at brain pressure. I also work as a doctor and neurology consultant where we run one of the largest clinics in the world specialising in brain pressure dynamics.

Space flight neuro-ocular syndrome.

The focus of this project is space flight neuro-ocular syndrome, SANS, and it affects nearly all astronauts who have been in space for greater than three months. This is a major concern because it causes fluid to build up or swelling around the eye nerve, the optic nerve, and also around the brain. Ultimately this can risk visual loss or damage to these structures.

The problem is that we don't have an effective treatment. SANS gets worse the longer the duration of space flight, so this is a real problem when we're trying to think about missions that extend beyond the moon and further out into space.

The project.

Our research project will look at how we can identify really early the signs of SANS, and then monitor this using eye scanning. Then we'll look at how we can treat SANS, and we'll do this using a GLP-1 receptor agonist, which is work developed in our lab designed to help reduce brain pressure, reduce fluid in the brain, reduce fluid around the optic nerve, and therefore protect these structures from damage.

Ultimately, this research project will hope to deliver a new treatment for SANS that will enable safe long-term space exploration to Mars and beyond.

Why is it important.

I want to introduce my colleague and co-investigator, Miss Susan Mollan, who is an ophthalmic consultant at University Hospital Birmingham, and the director of ophthalmic research.

Miss Mollan, why is it important to scan the nerve at the back of the eye for this research project?

Imaging the eye nerve is incredibly important as this can be the first sign of raised intracranial pressure and a condition called papilledema. These specialized scans, OCT, can diagnose this extremely early and also, what our research has shown, can predict brain pressure.

This study is going to benefit astronauts, as we have one of these platforms on the International Space Station, and the astronauts have been performing these scans on themselves, but this is going to help our NHS patients and patients worldwide.

Eye scans with OCT imaging are non-invasive and incredibly quick. So this is the OCT machine. We use it in the NHS to take pictures of the nerve at the back of the eye, it's non-invasive and very, very rapid, and we can get really accurate images on any disease going on in the optic nerve, but it's also available on the International Space Station.

This is a really quick scan because the astronauts have to be able to perform this on themselves whilst in microgravity, so whilst they're floating.

Although we're focusing on a really rare cohort of patients—the astronauts that develop SANS—what we're learning about how to monitor the optic nerve with OCT and what we're learning about how to control the fluid in the optic nerve with GLP-1 receptor agonists is very applicable to our terrestrial patients.

We run a very large clinic at University Hospital Birmingham dealing with a condition called idiopathic intracranial hypertension, which is another condition of fluid on the brain and around the eye nerve. So the things that we're learning with our space research will be very applicable to our patients back on Earth to guide us on how to monitor them more appropriately, and also how to treat them more appropriately.