Blood Marker Could Help Spot Advanced CTE in Living People
Scientists have found a substance in the blood that flags an advanced form of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, a brain disease linked to repeated hits to the head. It is a step toward testing for the condition in people who are still alive.
Right now, CTE can only be diagnosed after death, through an examination of brain tissue. The disease comes from repeated trauma to the head, and it is especially common in American football, rugby and soccer.
Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis focused on a blood protein fragment called eMTBR-tau243. The Guardian reports that levels of the fragment were higher in the blood of 11 people with autopsy-confirmed CTE than in healthy people. The levels also rose as the disease became more severe. The study was published in the medical journal JAMA Neurology, with Kanta Horie as co-senior author and Chihiro Sato as a co-author.
The test was good at separating advanced CTE from healthy people, with high accuracy. It did not reliably catch early-stage cases, which matters because early detection is often the goal. It also has not yet been validated as a diagnostic tool, meaning it has not been proven reliable enough for doctors to use on patients.
Football is where the stakes are most visible. In a study of nearly 400 NFL players whose brains were donated after death, 93.5% showed evidence of CTE. More than 350 NFL players have been diagnosed with the disease after death, including Mike Webster, Junior Seau and Frank Gifford.
The condition is not limited to American football. Boxer Ricky Hatton received a mild CTE diagnosis after his death. In soccer, the Professional Footballers' Association recommends that professional players head the ball no more than 10 times a week in training, and that children under 12 not head it at all.
If a blood test holds up in larger studies, it could give doctors a way to check for brain damage while a patient is alive. That could change how players, families and coaches think about head impacts, though that work is still ahead. For now, the finding is a promising lead rather than a test anyone can take.
