Nocturnal hormone secretion and the sleep EEG in patients several months after traumatic brain injury.

After severe traumatic brain injury (TBI), sleep disturbances and changes in hormone secretion are frequently observed. Similarly, in depression, abnormalities of sleep and neuroendocrine regulation are common. To test the hypothesis that the changes in brain-injured patients several months after injury are similar to those seen in patients with depression, the authors investigated simultaneously the sleep EEG and nocturnal hormone secretion in 13 young male nondepressed patients after TBI and 13 age-matched control subjects. The resulting data show a pattern of sleep-endocrine changes in patients after TBI, which has some similarities to that of patients with remitted depression.