A new study by Boston University shows that brain damage in young contact sport athletes may be visible years before CTE appears.
The new study by researchers at the Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine reveals that athletes with repeated head-impact injuries show brain cell loss, inflammation and vascular damage; all before chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) actually forms.
Researchers performed single-nucleus RNA sequencing on frozen human brain tissue from 28 men between the ages of 25 and 51 and divided them into three groups: a control group of eight men who didn’t play contact sports; an group comprised of eight American football players and a soccer player, none of whom were diagnosed with CTE; and agroup of 11 contact-sport athletes with low-stage CTE. All results were further validated and confirmed in larger sample sets and through comparison to other published studies.
The study showed similar levels of vascular injury and inflammation in athletes without CTE, suggesting that brain damage from head injuries is not solely dependent on CTE.
The study also found that a 56% loss of neurons in young athletes participating in contact sports.
“These results have the potential to significantly change how we view contact sports. They suggest that exposure to RHI can kill brain cells and cause long-term brain damage, independent of CTE,” said Jonathan Cherry, PhD, assistant professor of pathology & laboratory medicine and director of the digital pathology core at the BU CTE Center."
“You don’t expect to see neuron loss or inflammation in the brains of young athletes because they are generally free of disease. These findings suggest that repetitive head impacts cause brain injury much earlier than we previously thought,” Cherry continued. “The risk for CTE is directly related to repetitive head impact exposure in contact sports. These results highlight that even athletes without CTE can have substantial brain injury. Understanding how these changes occur, and how to detect them during life, will help the development of better prevention strategies and treatments to protect young athletes.”
“This groundbreaking study shows that repetitive hits to the head, including concussions and the more frequent non-concussive impacts, cause brain damage in young people even before CTE. These findings should serve as a call to reduce head hits in contact sports at all levels, including youth, high school and college,” adds coauthor Ann McKee, MD, director of the BU CTE Center and William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor of Neurology and Pathology at BU.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available.
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