Mitochondrial DNA deletions in acute brain injury

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Abstract
WE hypothesized that generation of free radicals following acute brain injury leads to increased accumulation of mitochondrial DNA deletions. We determined the prevalence of two deletions (mtDNAΔ4977bp and mtDNAΔ7436bp) in brain from 53 patients with a short survival interval (mean 5 days) following transient global cerebral ischaemia due to cardiorespiratory arrest, 14 patients with long survival (mean 8.75 years) following traumatic brain injury and 43 age-matched controls. A higher prevalence of mtDNAΔ4977bp was found in aged controls. There was a strong correlation between the presence of the two mtDNA deletions in individual cases (p Δ4977bp