The brain monitoring with Information Technology (BrainIT) collaborative network: EC feasibility study results and future direction.

Background: The BrainIT group works collaboratively on developing standards for collection and analyses of data from brain-injured patients and to facilitate a more efficient infrastructure for assessing new health care technology with the primary objective of improving patient care. European Community (EC) funding supported meetings over a year to discuss and define a core dataset to be collected from patients with traumatic brain injury using IT-based methods. We now present the results of a subsequent EC-funded study with the aim of testing the feasibility of collecting this core dataset across a number of European sites and discuss the future direction of this research network.

An attempt to investigate the presence of Epstein Barr virus in multiple sclerosis and normal control brain tissue.

Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is an important demyelinating disease of the central nervous system, the aetiology of which may possibly have a viral component at some stage. In this study we investigated the possible involvement in MS of the human herpes virus Epstein Barr Virus (EBV). Utilising both fluorescent and non-fluorescent in situ hybridisation (FISH) techniques, we examined human post mortem tissues obtained from a tissue bank for the presence of immediate early and late viral gene and protein expression in MS patient normal appearing white matter (NAWM), lesional tissue and normal control brain samples.