Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy

Pat Student

Dr. Ted Wilson

11/08/16

Introduction:

Ever since scientist have begun to understand the effects of a head trauma or brain injury on someone they have been focusing more on the neurological deficits such as concussions. Most sport concussions are very minor, but after repeated traumas to the head, a small group of concussions can develop symptoms that may last for years. Even if the long lasting symptoms don’t show up for days, months or years since their head trauma. The most serious cases of a concussion injury that is caused by head trauma is called Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy,also known as CTE, is a progressive degenerative disease of the brain. It is mostly common in athletes, but can appear in others with repetitive brain trauma (Dickstein, 2016 Pg. 1). The most interesting thing about this disease isn’t how to prevent this disease, but instead, the fact that there is no way to tell if someone has it until it’s too late. Even with the advancement of technology in the 21st century, we are still unable to diagnose CTE because it displays symptoms common to other neurodegenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer’s (Dickstein, 2016, Pg. 1).

This paper will discuss what CTE is, the reason researchers have not been able to diagnose CTE until recently, the research behind finding a new way to detect CTE, and the risks of underestimating CTE.

Body:

Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy can occur in anyone but it is more common in people with prior exposure to head impacts such as football players (Carey, NY Times, Accessed Nov. 3, 2016). CTE is triggered when repeated head traumas occur through one life span. The trauma triggers degeneration of brain tissue and a buildup of an abnormal protein called Tau (Stern, 2016 Pg. 1100). Tau protein is supposed to stabilize microtubules. However, when Tau proteins hyper-produce, it causes filaments to tangle and these tangles contribute to pathology of Alzheimer’s disease (Christine, 2016 Pg. 2). Tau protein usually attacks the temporal and frontal lobes which are involved in motor functions, impulse control and auditory awareness. When Tau protein is secreted unproductively from its source, Tau protein helps in decaying with brain tissue disorders like CTE and Alzheimer’s. Symptoms forChronic Traumatic Encephalopathy are memory loss, confusion, impaired judgement, impulse control problems, aggression, depression, anxiety, suicidality, and eventually dementia (). This is a problem because these symptoms are very common with many other neurological diseases and because it has no physical features incommon with CTE. There is no way for someone even a physician to diagnose it, until they can do an autopsy because of its similarities with other neurological traumas until recently.

Studies now are helping create a way to diagnosis Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy sooner. A study from Robert A. Stern, of University of Boston, aimedto support the use of exosomal Tau measurements in plasma as biomarker of CTE (Stern, 2016 Pg. 1101). So, researchers have been taking samples from both groups. One group was a group of people without any history of contact sport accidents, and the other was a group of former NFL players. In summary, this study explains that the results were that the groups did not differ in plasma exosomes, but the NFL group had significantly higher exosomal Tau compared to the control group (Stern, 2016 Pg. 1103). This shows that scientists are on their way to discovering a way to find CTE in living people. Before this study, CTE couldn’t even be discovered until an autopsy was performed on the body and they saw the degeneration of bone tissue (Bogoslovsky, 2016 Pg. 4). Though they cannot surely confirmthat an increase of the tau protein means that you have Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, a tau protein increase can lead to many diseases and many causes. It can help scientist narrow the margin down on how to detect Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy and eventually use this to help breakdown the Tau proteins that are being overused.

Understanding the risks that comes with Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy is very important. It’s very important that people understand even though its more common for you to get CTE if you are an athlete due to head traumas (Gavett, 2011 Pg. 181) , you can still get CTE if you have ever had any head traumas in your life because it may take years for you to get CTE (Stern, 2016 Pg.1100). You also need to remember that CTE in the 21st century doesn’t have a cure and there’s also no way to distinguish CTE from Dementia or any other type of head trauma.

Conclusion:

Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy is a disease that is not commonly discussed, but can be very significant to one’s quality of life. Whether you are an athlete or someone who fell on their head just once, you can get Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy due to overactive Tau protein and you wouldn’t know it until someone does your autopsy. Although clinicians are creating waysto diagnosisCTE before you die and a cure has not been discovered. A proven cure will not be ready until there studies are proven to be correct. Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy is a long progressing disease that if you do not take seriously can slowly start taking away pieces of yourself just like how Alzheimer’s affects people. If your reading this to understand the disease also know that with this disease you should try to avoid head collisions or traumas because these traumas help the Tau proteins over produce and cause bone tissue degeneration.

Work Cited:

Brandon E. Gavett, Ph.D., Robert A. Stern, Ph.D., and Ann C. McKee, M.D. Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy: A Potential Late Effect of Sport- Related Concussive and Subconcussive Head Trauma. Published by Clinical Sports Med 2011: Pages 180-188

Christine M. Baugh, Julie M. Stamm, David O. Reily, Brandon E. Gavett, Martha E. Shenton, Alexander Lin, Christopher J. Nowinski, Robert C. Cantu, Ann C. McKee, Robert A. Stern. Published by Boston University 2012: Pages 1-11

DL Dickstein, MY Pullman, C Fernandez, JA Short, L Kostakoglu, K Knesaurek, L Soleimani, BD Jordan, WA Gordan, K Dams-O’Connor, BN Delman, E Wong, CY Tang, ST DeKosky,

JR Stone, RC Cantu, M Sano, PR Hof and S Gandy. Cerebral retention pattern in clinically probable CTE resembles pathognomonic distribution of CTE taupathy. Published by 2016 : Pages 1-8.

Robert A. Stern, Yorghos Tripodis, Christine M. Baugh, Nathan G. Fritts, Brett M. Martin, Christine Chaisson, Robert C. Cantu, James A. Joyce, Sahil Shah, Tsueneya Ikezu, Jing Zhang, Cicek Gercel-Taylor and Douglas D. Taylor. Preliminary Study of Plasma Exosomal Tau as a Potential Biomarker for Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. Published by Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease and IOS Press, 2016: Pages 1099-1109.

Tanya Bogoslovsky, Jessica Gill, Andreas Jeromin, Cora Davis, and Ramon Diaz-Arrastia. Fluid Biomarkers of Traumatic Brain Injury and Intended Context of Use. Published by 2016: Pages 1-22

This was for athletic research of CTE in athletes from the New York Times by Benedict Carey

Accessed: November 3, 2016