Doctors Currently Can’t Diagnose CTE In Living Patients, But Scientists Might Have Just Taken First Step
Researchers from Boston University’s School of Medicine have identified an inflammatory protein circulating in spinal fluid that may reflect the presence of CTE in patients’ brains.
Los Angeles Times:
Scientists May Have Found A Way To Diagnose CTE In Football Players While They're Still Alive
It is a humbling but very motivating fact that a person currently has to die before doctors can make a diagnosis of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the degenerative brain disease that afflicts many professional football players and other athletes who have sustained repeated blows to the head. After all, if it were possible to diagnose CTE in the living, those athletes and the physicians who care for them could probably do something useful with that knowledge. (Healy, 9/26)