Adequacy and Importance of Dietary Antioxidants in Traumatic Brain InjuryPatients

Objective: To evaluate dietary adequacy of patients presenting for evaluation at an outpatient Traumatic brain injury (TBI) clinic. Research Design and Method: We identified 6 key dietary antioxidants with defined dietary intake reference ranges that are considered important for brain health. Adult patients completed the 24-hour recall-face-to-face interview to calculate estimated nutrient intake. Nutrients were assessed individually and were also summarized into a summary score of intakes. Individual nutrients, summary nutrient intake, were compared with recommended dietary requirement (RDA) to assess the adequacy, body mass index was calculated, and medical records were abstracted for diagnoses of TBI. Results: A total of 71 TBI patients were complete the study, the majority were young age between 18-30 years, half of patients were classified as mild TBI while 12.7% and 40.8% were classified as moderate and severe TBI respectively based on Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS). Motor vehicle accidents were the most common cause of TBI followed by falls from height. One fourth of patients were underweight, while (47.9%) were normal weight and 24% were overweight and/or obese. Most of patients (72%) were current smokers; no patient met the RDAs for all six dietary antioxidants. Eighteen patients only (25%) fulfilled the requirements for 4 or more nutrients, while 53 patients fulfilled 6 or fewer requirements. The overall daily intake of dietary antioxidants was significantly lower than the RDA. Discussion: The importance of micronutrients is often neglected. Diets failing to meet RDAs for important brain nutrients were common in an outpatient TBI clinic, with the worst mean scores of intakes for those patients compared with the estimated average requirements. Multidimensional treatment plans, perhaps incorporating some of the described nutritional adjuvants, will thus merit more investigations from both the bench and the bedside to elucidate effective strategies to best treat TBI patients.