A spot of tea for your brain injury?

When you think about a cup of tea, you are probably not thinking about protocatechuic acid (PCA), an antioxidant found in it. Erik’s funded project examined the effects of PCA to improve the recovery of juvenile rats after they experience a mild traumatic brain injury (TBI). As catchy as the title of this study is, Erik’s rats treated with PCA did not show any significant changes in terms of behaviour or cellular health.

However, like any well prepared scientist, Erik planned his experiments to test other important personalized medicine factors. This may come as a surprise, but men and women are biologically different, yet the sex of the animals are not often considered in neuroscience studies. Erik discovered that there is a different path of dysfunction between male and female rats who experience mild TBI in terms of their behavior and markers of cellular heath. In particular, the cellular powerhouses in the brains of female rats, the mitochondria, consumed oxygen at a faster rate but more inefficiently, possibly indicating cellular dysfunction. So, in addition to raising caution surrounding tea (or really any single molecule) as a treatment for TBI, Erik was able to publish this study in a peer-reviewed journal and help inform the world about the importance of considering sex as a factor in personalized medicine.