Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), The Death Disease
By Thomas Schnabel
Can you think of a disease that can only be diagnosed once you are dead? Chronic traumatic encephalopathy, also known as CTE, is a neurogenerative disease that can only be diagnosed postmortem. Repeated traumatic brain injuries can cause this disease. Think of the damaged brain as a jack-o-lantern shriveled up after sitting outside for too long. This is what CTE can do to your brain after it is exposed to repeated head trauma.
History of CTE
CTE was first called "punch drunk syndrome" in 1928 because it was found in a group of boxers who were having symptoms of CTE. In 2005, the first reported evidence of CTE involving football players was published by Bennet Omalu (What is CTE?, 2020). However, it is not just boxers and football players who have been found to have CTE. Hockey players and soccer players have also recently made the news about CTE. Military personnel have also been found to have CTE. Traumatic brain injuries that happen during training, accidents, and explosions have been linked to CTE (McKee, 2015).
Symptoms of CTE
The symptoms of CTE are like other neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, ALS, and Parkinson’s disease. Cognitive impairment, impulsiveness, depression, short-term memory loss, executive function decline, emotional instability, substance abuse, suicidal thoughts and behavior (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy).
Football Players Diagnosed with CTE
Junior Seau was not the first player to be diagnosed with CTE, but his story illustrates how CTE can impact a person’s life. He played football for 20 years in the NFL. Towards the end of his career, his personality gradually began to change. He would have mood swings, was forgetful and depressed. In 2012, he committed suicide through a self-inflicted gunshot to the chest. When his brain was examined, it was very evident he had CTE (CBS News, 2018). Aaron Hernandez was also a football player diagnosed with CTE. But he was considered very young to have developed it. When he committed suicide in 2017, they found he had already developed CTE and he was only 27 years old.
Personal Concerns
I started playing football in the 3rd grade and played it through 12th grade. I suffered multiple concussions during my playing career. After each one, it took longer to recover from the last. After my last concussion, I had people tell me I am going to have CTE. Is that something I should be worried about? One concussion or other types of brain trauma does not cause CTE. Rather it is an accumulation of repeated head trauma over a span of many years. In a study done by Alosco et al., age of first exposure (AFE) matters (2018). AFE and tackle football was not associated with CTE. But earlier AFE from tackle football predicted earlier neurobehavioral symptom onset. This means that neurological damage progress is related to how early brain trauma begins.
Prevention and Awareness
The best way to prevent the development of CTE is to reduce the number of times you hit your head or suffer head trauma. You can treat someone who is thought to possibly have CTE similarly to the way you would take care of someone who was diagnosed with dementia. There are a lot of unknowns regarding CTE and with research and development in technology, hopefully, it will be able to be detected, managed, and treated before an untimely death.
References
Alosco, M., Mez, J., Tripodis, Y., Kiernan, P., Abdolmohammadi, B., Murphy, L., . . . McKee, A. (2018, May). Age of first exposure to tackle football and chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Retrieved October 14, 2020, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6367933/
CBS News. (2018, January 16). Junior Seau had degenerative brain disease CTE when he committed suicide, study shows. Retrieved October 14, 2020, from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/junior-seau-had-degenerative-brain-disease-cte-when-he-committed-suicide-study-shows/
Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE). (n.d.). Retrieved October 14, 2020, from https://www.alz.org/alzheimers-dementia/what-is-dementia/related_conditions/chronic-traumatic-encephalopathy-(cte)
McKee, A., Stein, T., Kiernan, P., & Alvarez, V. (2015, May). The neuropathology of chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Retrieved October 14, 2020, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4526170/
What is CTE? (2020, August 11). Retrieved October 14, 2020, from https://concussionfoundation.org/CTE-resources/what-is-CTE.