Table 1.
Participant characteristics across the groups of healthy volunteers, trauma controls and patients with mild traumatic brain injury
| Participant Characteristic | Healthy volunteer controls (n = 99) | Trauma controls (n = 25) | mTBI (n = 61) | Kruskal–Wallisa or Chi-Squareb | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| df | H or χ2 | p | ||||
| Age, mean (SD), years | 36 (12) | 35 (12) | 42 (18) | 2 | 3.2a | 0.202 |
| Sex, n (%) female | 50 (51) | 12 (48) | 19 (31) | 2 | 5.77b | 0.056 |
| GCS, n (%) | ||||||
| 15 | – | – | 47 (77) | |||
| 14 | 11 (18) | |||||
| 13 | 3 (5) | |||||
| AIS total, median (range) | – | 1 (1–5) | 4 (1–16) | |||
| AIS extracranial, median (range) | – | 1 (1–5) | 2 (1–12) | |||
| Marshall score, n (%) | ||||||
| I | – | – | 53 (87) | |||
| II | – | – | 7 (11.4) | |||
| III | – | – | 0 | |||
| IV | – | – | 0 | |||
| V | – | – | 0 | |||
| VI | – | – | 1 (1.6) | |||
| Mechanism of injury | ||||||
| Road traffic collision | – | 7 (28) | 14 (23) | 6 | 15.44b | 0.017 |
| Fall | – | 9 (36) | 21 (34) | |||
| Violence or assault | – | 0 | 6 (10) | |||
| Blow to head (not assault) | – | 0 | 7 (12) | |||
| Rugby injury | – | 2(8) | 4(7) | |||
| Cycling or Horse riding | – | 3(12) | 9(15) | |||
| Blow to body (not head) | – | 4(16) | 0 | |||
| Education, n (%) | ||||||
| Low | 41 (43) | 10 (40) | 19 (31) | 4 | 2.41b | 0.660 |
| Middle | 26 (27) | 5 (20) | 17 (28) | |||
| High | 29 (30) | 10 (40) | 25 (41) | |||
mTBI mild traumatic brain injury, GCS Glasgow Coma Scale, AIS Abbreviated Injury Scale, SD standard deviation, n number