The Mysteries of CTE
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CTE is a real issue.
We don’t really pretend to understand it
fully.
Dr. Ann McKey and Dr. Dan Pearl and many others
around the nation that are neuropathologists
have contributed hugely to our understanding
of the tau protein and the pathology related
to that.
What is causing it, why it is it ends up in
the parts of the brain where it registers
and so forth and why it affects certain people
is a big mystery still.
And one of the things that we don’t understand
fully is what’s the effect of that whole
tau pathology in people who don’t have traumatic
brain injury.
So a lot of the research that is going on
that we hear about out of Boston and elsewhere
is basically the numerator of the equation.
We don’t know what the denominator is.
There are not large societal studies that
come to brain biopsy or autopsy and so forth
that tell us that and we still don’t have
adequate neuroimaging scanners that can detect
it in a failsafe and reliable way, at least
not right now.
We’re getting closer, but I think we need
to look at what is the true incidence across
the nation, and I might have it for all I
know and I don’t have any long history of
multi concussions and so forth.
But there certain are tau pathologies known
in other parts of the world more so than here
and associated with certain neurodegenerative
conditions such as Alzheimer’s.
There are pieces of that that actually merge
under the circumstances that have to do with
tau.
And so we really have a lot to learn and it’s
going to take a concerted effort again to
look at that in a societal large scale way.