Potential breakthrough in CTE research

[jbindm]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/cte-diagnose-test_us_59ca984be4b07e9ca11f3877

I thought this was kind of an interesting read. For the tl;dr crowd the gist is that CTE researchers at Boston University may be close to discovering a way to diagnose CTE in patients while they're still alive. Currently, there is no way to definitively diagnose CTE short of a brain examination after death.

 

[ArgentCy]

Two very interesting notes. It appears to me that we still have a long way to go to understand the brain. Looks more like an accelerated aging process.

The more years a person played football, the higher their protein levels were. However, the researchers found no correlation between levels of CCL11 and the number of recorded concussions a player had experienced.

While increased levels of this protein are already linked to the inflammatory process and the aging process.

 

[jbindm]

Two very interesting notes. It appears to me that we still have a long way to go to understand the brain. Looks more like an accelerated aging process.

The more years a person played football, the higher their protein levels were. However, the researchers found no correlation between levels of CCL11 and the number of recorded concussions a player had experienced.

While increased levels of this protein are already linked to the inflammatory process and the aging process.

Yeah, they still have a long way to go. But it's an interesting early step. Being able to test an individual for CTE would be a game changer for the sport of football, for better and for worse.

 

[cdface]

Two very interesting notes. It appears to me that we still have a long way to go to understand the brain. Looks more like an accelerated aging process.

The more years a person played football, the higher their protein levels were. However, the researchers found no correlation between levels of CCL11 and the number of recorded concussions a player had experienced.

While increased levels of this protein are already linked to the inflammatory process and the aging process.

I think they've known for a while that concussions aren't the best predictor of this disease, rather that it's the total accumulation of your brain bouncing around in your skull -- unfortunately that's difficult to quantify compared to discrete concussion events.

 

[besserheimerphat]

@cdface beat me to it, but it's not about concussions per se, rather the accumulated damage from ALL impacts. And that accelerated aging can potentially have big repercussions, depending on the degree of acceleration.