"A little spit may help predict whether a childs concussion symptoms will subside in days or persist for weeks. A test that measures fragments of genetic material in saliva was nearly  percent accurate in identifying children and adolescents whose symptoms persisted for at least a month a Penn State team told the Pediatric Academic Societies Meeting https in San Francisco Calif. In contrast a concussion survey commonly used by doctors was right less than  percent of the time. If the experimental test pans out a pediatrician could collect saliva with a swab send it off to the lab and then be able to call the family the next day says Steven Hicks httpsprofiles.psu.eduprofilesdisplay an assistant professor of pediatrics at Penn State Hershey. Hicks helped develop the test and consults for a company that hopes to market concussion tests. A reliable test would help overcome a major obstacle in assessing and treating concussions which affect more than one million children and adolescents in the U.S. each year. Many of the injuries are related to sports. Article continues after this message from our sponsor In most cases concussion symptoms last only a few days. But up to  percent of young patients go on to have these prolonged headaches fatigue nausea and those symptoms can last sometimes one to four months Hicks says. And right now theres no way to know which kids are going to have longterm problems he says. Parents often say that their biggest concern is When is my child going to be back to normal again  Hicks says. And thats something we have a very difficult time predicting. Hicks and a team of researchers have been looking for an objective test that might help. They knew that after a concussion injured brain cells try to heal themselves. As a part of this process brain cells release tiny fragments of genetic material called microRNAs. Some of these fragments eventually turn up in blood and even in saliva. The team did an experiment that involved  concussion patients between the ages of  and . When they came to our medical center and received the diagnosis of concussion we evaluated them with some standard surveybased tools and then we also got a sample of their saliva Hicks says. Most samples were collected about a week after the injury. The team measured levels of many different microRNAs in the samples and eventually they identified a handful that let them predict how long symptoms would last. They also identified one microRNA that predicted which children would have a specific concussion symptom difficulties with memory and problem solving Hicks says. A saliva test could greatly improve care for young people who dont have obvious symptoms of a concussion says Manish Bhomia an adjunct assistant professor at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda Md. A lot of children get mild concussion and oftentimes it goes ignored he says. A reliable lab test would help ensure that children who have a head injury dont go back to school or to the soccer field before their brain has healed Bhomia says. And microRNAs offer a promising way to assess concussions in adults as well as children says Bhomia whose research involves a range of biomarkers for traumatic brain injury. But saliva may not be the best place to measure microRNAs Bhomia says. A better option he says might be blood samples which tend to contain greater numbers of the genetic fragments."