Four years ago, researchers from Evanston's NorthShore University HealthSystem and other scientific organizations announced that they had used brain scans to detect the hallmark of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, in ex-football players while they were still alive _ a technique that promised to spur more accurate diagnoses, and possibly new treatments.
The scans indicated the presence of tau, a protein that builds up over damaged neurological cells, in the brains of former NFL players. But the scientists cautioned that the results needed to be confirmed, since CTE can be definitely diagnosed only by examining brain tissue after a person's death.
Dr. Julian Bailes, a NorthShore neurosurgeon, said Wednesday that confirmation has arrived.
In a paper published last week in the journal Neurosurgery, Bailes and other researchers reported that one of the former players who had undergone a scan had his brain examined after he died _ and sure enough, the tissue revealed that he had been suffering from CTE.
The condition is associated with repetitive head trauma and results in dementia-like symptoms.
More research is needed to corroborate the result, but if it holds up, Bailes said it could be a pivotal step in finding a way to help people with the condition.
"If there's ever a treatment developed, you can test the response to it," he said. "If you can trust the scans, you can tell a football player he shouldn't keep playing, or tell someone in the military he can't get in the way of explosions."
