New test for CTE on living
DURING an interview with the Daily News last year, Boston University professor of neurology and neurosurgery Dr. Robert Stern said that he believed diagnosing the degenerative brain disease, chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), in living human beings was possible within the next five to 10 years.
But that timetable may become a reality even sooner after Tuesday’s announcement by Boston University that researchers have discovered a new biomarker for CTE which “may allow the disease to be diagnosed during life for the first time.”
Up until Tuesday’s announcement, doctors and scientists have only been able to diagnose CTE — a disease that doctors have linked to football and the repetitive hits to the head and brain sustained by players — after death. Earlier this year, a BU study revealed that of the 111 brains from deceased former NFL players that were analyzed, 110 were found to have CTE.
Tuesday’s findings, which the university announced are published in the journal PLOS ONE, also may help physicians and researchers determine the differences between CTE and Alzheimer’s, “which often presents with symptoms similar to CTE and also can only be diagnosed post-mortem.”
“The ability to diagnose CTE in living individuals will allow for research into prevention and treatment of the disease,” the BU press release states.
According to the university, researchers studied 23 brains of former college and pro football players, and compared them with the brains of 50 non-athletes with Alzheimer’s and 18 “non-athlete controls.”
“They observed that (biomarker) CCL11 levels were normal in the brains of the non-athlete controls and non-athletes with Alzheimer’s disease, but were significantly elevated in the brains of individuals with CTE,” the BU release said. “They then compared the degree of elevation of CCL11 to the number of years those individuals played football and found that there was a positive correlation between the CCL11 levels and the number of years played.”
Deceased former NFL players such as Frank Gifford, Ken Stabler, Junior Seau and Dave Duerson were all diagnosed with CTE.