While previous research from Boston University’s Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) Center has shown that the connection between repetitive head trauma and CTE may occur partly though elevated neuroinflammation, a new study has found that the type of immune response that occurs in early CTE is not uniform and that some aspects of it might be impaired and decrease after injury.
The researchers also found that in individuals who have a history of contact sports but have not yet developed CTE, there are specific metabolic impairments that are found in the area in the brain where CTE pathology is first seen.
“Fully understanding the brain’s complex response is necessary to untangle the advantageous versus disease causing components of the brain’s inflammatory response following repetitive head trauma,” said Thor Stein, MD, PhD, a neuropathologist at VA Boston Healthcare System, associate professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at BUSM and co-corresponding author of the study.
