Dementia in contact sport athletes
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Lead the way in ground-breaking research
Currently, Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) can only be confirmed by analysing brain tissue after death.
The goal is to be able to find markers – through a blood test or MRI scan – that can indicate whether someone has the disease not only while they are still alive, but before they even start to show symptoms. This research means we could identify when people are starting to have brain changes before they have symptoms. This is really important because that’s the window where we might be able to intervene.
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Why is this research so important?
What are the long-term consequences of repetitive head injury in sport? CTE is a progressive brain disease that causes dementia and has been reported in athletes from a range of contact sports including rugby, American football, boxing and ice hockey.
CTE can only be definitively diagnosed by post-mortem brain examination, and we know very little about what happens inside the brain as the disease progresses. Our research examines the tissue donated to the Sports Brain Bank Initiative of the Neurological Foundation Human Brain Bank. We use fluorescent labelling to identify microscopic changes in CTE brain tissue compared to normal aging and other neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease. This work will help us understand the link between repetitive head injury and dementia.
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