The National Football League (NFL) seasondoesn't officially kick off until September 5, but a familiar tale is startingto repeat itself. So far, 11 players have been listed on injured reservebecause of concussions suffered during pre-season games and practices.
The fear that athletes who suffer repeatedblows to the head may end up with a preventable cause of dementia calledchronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is leading neurodegeneration researchersat Penn to join in a collaborative study of retired NFL players, to see ifthere are any clinical symptoms (such as depression, disinhibition, cognitiveor motor impairment) and biomarkers present that can be measured and trackedover time. The ultimate goal is to use the clinical symptoms and biomarkers tobe able to diagnose CTE during lifetime, as the only way to diagnose CTEcurrently is through an examination of brain tissue after death.
The study, done in collaboration withresearchers at Boston University’s Center forthe Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy, will evaluate 100 retired NFLplayers, ages 40-69, who played certain high risk positions for a particularnumber of years. They will be compared to male non-contact sport athletes of asimilar age without any history of brain injury.
The study will not determine the risk forprofessional football players of developing a disease, or try to estimate theincidence or prevalence of CTE. Instead, researchers hope to develop biomarkertests for CTE and to explore the clinical presentation of this disease likelyto affect athletes at all levels of play, as well as other members of oursociety, such as combat military personnel.The study is funded by the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke(NINDS), National Institute on Aging (NIA), and Eunice Kennedy Shriver NationalInstitute of Child Health & Human Development (NICHD) (1R01NS078337-01A1).
Penn researchers will transfer theirknowledge of neurodegenerative biomarker test development from their major roles in Alzheimer'sdisease and Parkinson'sdisease cognitive biomarker efforts. In 2009, the Penn team announced thata biomarker test was capable of confirming or ruling out Alzheimer’s disease;the test is now being used in research studies and similar tests are beingevaluated in other conditions.
While there are only 1,800 active NFLplayers and 2,700 former players, studies like this can help researchers betterunderstand how CTE manifests, and hopefully find biomarker tests to detectdisease and targets for possible neurodegeneration treatments. Future studiesmay try to track people at high risk over time to map out characteristics andrisk factors of CTE.
The NFL has issued new rules aimed atpreventing injuries on the field, but the more tests available for on sidelinesand at hospitals, the better.