TITLE:
Descriptive Analysis between TBI Diagnosis and Neurodegenerative Disease Outcomes in an Older Adult Population
AUTHORS:
James D. Schneweis, Frank T. Materia, Megan Baumgardner, Sue M. Lai
KEYWORDS:
TBI, Neurodegeneration
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Preventive Medicine,
Vol.16 No.5,
May
28,
2026
ABSTRACT: Currently, the largest health crises in the world are neurodegenerative diseases, which affect millions per year. While studies examine plausible causative agents, associations between neurodegenerative disease and traumatic brain injury have been noted. Motivated by previous studies linking TBI exposure to neurological disease, this study examined TBI and neurodegenerative disease cases from the University of Kansas Medical Center (KUMC) HERON database. Three hundred and thirty-four unique cases were analyzed using Cox hazard regression modeling to characterize patterns in demographics, TBI diagnosis categories, and neurodegenerative disease outcomes for adults with one recorded TBI diagnosis. The Cox hazard model was uninterpretable due to no cases under 30 being identified and loss of variance; therefore, analysis was limited to older adults and focused on exploratory logistic regression analysis as opposed to time-to-event. The majority of associations examined were not statistically robust, but diffuse traumatic brain injury was observed to have a nominally significant association with Lewy Body Dementia. Within the cohort, an individual’s sex was associated with Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis. These findings describe plausible patterns in TBI-exposed older adult populations but should not be viewed as legitimate population pattern estimates.