WASHINGTON (TNND) — Every year in America, nearly 25,000 people are diagnosed with brain cancer. Most of them — more than 18,000 — are projected to die.
Some of the risks of this deadly disease are known, but the exact causes of most of these cancers is still a mystery.
Now, a groundbreaking study of our troops and veterans is showing a likely connection between the most severe types of traumatic brain injuries and brain cancers, including glioblastoma, the most common and deadliest kind.
For Dodi Noble, the pain of her father’s death is still fresh after three years. Memories brought tears as she reflected on the legacy of her dad, Randall Horner.
Noble said her father “never met a stranger,” remembering him as a friendly and kind man who would do anything for anyone.
Randall Horner was a humble and hard-working man who had his share of hard knocks. Noble recalled that he’d suffered two traumatic brain injuries in his life, including a chimney falling on his head in 1985 and a fall onto concrete in 1994.
Both times, he was knocked out. Both times, he recovered, always returning to the role he relished: being the rock of the family.
He was a playful grandfather, up for any challenge, singing karaoke and rolling in the snow to entertain the children who loved him.
He loved his family,” Noble said. “They all wanted to be at papaw’s house.”
But five years ago, things began to change, as Horner experienced sudden episodes of silence.
His family would learn it was glioblastoma, an aggressive and deadly form of brain cancer. It was stage four by the time it was found.
For a brief moment, it looked like Horner might beat his brain cancer. His tumor shrunk and he got to ring the famous bell.
But the happy moment was short lived and soon after, Noble endured the pain of watching her father slip away.
She had one word to describe it: “horrible.”
On Jan. 6, 2022, a day before his 69th birthday, Randall Horner passed away.
In the battle against brain cancer, his daughter had all but forgotten about her dad’s earlier brain injuries, never suspecting there could be a connection.
Horner didn’t serve in the military, but new military research could provide insight that could save others like him.
Dr. Ian Stewart, an Air Force Colonel, saved lots of wounded troops while deployed as an ICU physician to Bagram in Afghanistan in 2012 and 2013. He wondered about the long-term impacts of the injuries they survived.
After a call from a colleague, he started looking at a potential connection between traumatic brain injuries, or TBIs, and brain cancer.
“He had seen a couple of special operations members, he knew they had several TBIs, and then they both had brain cancer,” Col. Stewart said. “He asked me, ‘Is there any way we could look at this?'”
So, he did.
He tracked scans that revealed glioblastoma tumors near the sites of previous head traumas in servicemembers.
When Col. Stewart began analyzing the military medical data of nearly two million veterans and active servicemembers, he said he discovered a real connection between severe traumatic brain injuries and brain cancer.
“Patients with moderate to severe traumatic brain injury had a 90% increase in their risk of brain cancer,” Col. Stewart said. “And patients with penetrating injury, they had an over threefold rise in their risk of brain cancer.”
He published his findings last year, the first-ever veteran cohort study connecting severe brain injuries and brain cancer, including glioblastoma, which is the third leading cause of cancer deaths among servicemembers, and the same kind that claimed Noble’s dad.
Mild TBIs were not associated with an increased risk.
While more research is needed, Col. Stewart is confident he’s made a breakthrough in understanding how some brain cancers may begin with significant injuries in some cases.
I think what we’re really discovering is that, yes, that may happen at that one point in time, but it could potentially change the subsequent course of your life,” Col. Stewart said.
It’s the first step of many, with the ultimate goal of understanding the risk more completely, and developing interventions that can save lives.
Every single one of these young men and women volunteered to serve their country, and in the course of that service, they sustained a TBI,” said Col. Stewart. “It’s imperative on us in the research community to do everything we can to make sure that these people live long, healthy and happy lives.”
We showed Dodi Noble the study.
“I wish we would have known,” she said.
Had she known, Noble said, her dad’s glioblastoma might have been spotted early enough to save him.
She said that with the information she now has, she’d offer advice for people who suffered a serious TBI.
“I would think they should get checked periodically,” she said.
While Col. Stewart’s discovery could provide a real breakthrough in understanding what causes brain cancers to form, much more research is needed before we know for sure whether severe TBI plays a real role. We’ll continue to track it.