{"id":33737,"date":"2016-06-03T11:57:10","date_gmt":"2016-06-03T15:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/busm\/?p=33737"},"modified":"2016-06-03T12:02:54","modified_gmt":"2016-06-03T16:02:54","slug":"cte-investigators-launch-16-million-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/2016\/06\/03\/cte-investigators-launch-16-million-study\/","title":{"rendered":"CTE Investigators Launch $16 Million Study"},"content":{"rendered":"

A former football player describes brain disease symptoms and angst<\/h4>\n
\"The
The title of Fox\u2019s talk to the researchers: \u201cMy Personal Journey Dealing with the Long Term Consequences of Playing the Game I Love.\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Tim Fox, the 62-year-old former New England Patriots safety, was describing to a room full of brain scientists at the Boston University School of Medicine (MED) the ferocious style of play that he\u2019d been trained in from an early age, one that had led to countless head injuries during his 20-year college and pro career. \u201cWe were taught to use your head to tackle,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was to be used as a weapon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fox, who also played for the Los Angeles Rams and the San Diego Chargers, recalled two occasions as a Patriot when he was knocked unconscious, revived, and sent back on the field, where he was knocked unconscious again. \u201cThe doctor would come over and ask you, \u2018What\u2019s your birthday, what\u2019s your phone number,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cYour buddy would be sitting next to you, he\u2019d whisper in your ear, give you the answer, you give the answer to the doctor, and you\u2019re back in the game.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some 50 scientists\u2014from MED and School of Public Health (SPH), the Cleveland Clinic, the Banner Alzheimer\u2019s Institute, the Mayo Clinic, Brigham and Women\u2019s Hospital, and other major institutions around the country\u2014gathered on the medical campus Wednesday to launch their landmark, seven-year, $16 million National Institutes of Health<\/a>\u00a0(NIH) and National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke<\/a>\u00a0(NINDS)\u2013funded study aimed at diagnosing CTE, a degenerative brain disease, during life. CTE, which is associated with repetitive brain trauma and characterized by changes in behavior, mood, and cognition\u2014including the development of dementia\u2014can currently be diagnosed only by postmortem examination of the brain. It has been found in professional football players, boxers, and other athletes with a history of repetitive brain injuries.<\/p>\n

Robert Stern<\/a>, the clinical core director of BU\u2019s Alzheimer\u2019s Disease & Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) Center<\/a>, who is leading the study, introduced Fox at the meeting.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d like to do anything in my power to help you folks get to the bottom of this,\u201d Fox told the scientists. He said he has significant cognitive impairments\u2014memory problems, difficulty with organizational tasks, severe mood changes\u2014that he believes are clear symptoms of CTE. He said that he\u2019d gotten lost driving to the meeting on the Medical Campus\u2014\u201cand I\u2019ve lived here for 25 years.\u201d As for his mood, he said, \u201cmy irritability factor has gone through the roof.\u201d<\/p>\n

The symptoms Fox described have been identified in people who were found, after death, to have had CTE. Does Fox have CTE? \u201cWe don\u2019t know,\u201d Stern said. And that, he said, is the point of the study: To develop ways of diagnosing CTE during life as well as to examine risk factors\u2014repetitive hits to the head and genetics, among other things.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to figure out why some people get this disease and some don\u2019t,\u201d Stern said.<\/p>\n

He and his colleagues will study 240 people: 120 former NFL players (with and without CTE symptoms), 60 former college football players (with and without CTE symptoms), and 60 control subjects who have never played contact sports or experienced any type of brain trauma. Researchers will examine the participants at MED and three other centers: the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health in Las Vegas, the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Ariz., and the New York University Langone Medical Center in New York City. In addition to extensive clinical examinations, participants will undergo positron emission tomography (PET) imaging, MRI scans, blood work, and other tests with the potential to detect changes in the brain associated with CTE. Data will be shared with researchers worldwide.<\/p>\n

\"Robert
Robert Stern, a MED professor and clinical core director of BU\u2019s Alzheimer\u2019s Disease Center and CTE Center, second from right, with his three co-principal investigators on the study, left to right: Eric Reiman, executive director, Banner Alzheimer\u2019s Institute; Martha Shenton, director, Psychiatry Neuroimaging Laboratory and senior scientist, Brigham and Women\u2019s Hospital; and Jeffrey Cummings, director, Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Stern is one of four principal investigators on the study. The others, whom he introduced yesterday, are Martha Shenton, director of the Psychiatry Neuroimaging Laboratory and senior scientist at Brigham and Women\u2019s Hospital; Jeffrey Cummings, director of the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health; and Eric Reiman, executive director of the Banner Alzheimer\u2019s Institute. Stern and others at the meeting emphasized the sweeping, multidisciplinary, multi-institution, collaborative nature of the research they are about to embark upon together. \u201cWe hear about this often as \u2018the Stern study,\u2019\u201d Stern told his colleagues. \u201cI can\u2019t stand that, and I\u2019ve been trying to do everything possible to undo that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cummings, who is a physician, talked about the importance of early diagnosis. \u201cHow can we inform athletes, soldiers, other people involved in repetitive brain injury, about their future?\u201d he said. However, he added: \u201cThis is not just about diagnosis. Eventually, this has to be about prevention and treatment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cummings also sounded a cautionary note. \u201cThis is a very newsworthy study,\u201d he said. \u201cAs representatives of the study, we all need to make sure we accurately represent what the study is and what it isn\u2019t. This is not epidemiology. This is a convenient sample of people we\u2019re able to recruit for the study. We cannot extrapolate from what we see to the entire population. The scientific process is key. This is about open, transparent interrogation. It\u2019s about asking questions, finding answers, trying to set all our pre-inclinations aside.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is funded by the public in order to help the public,\u201d he added. \u201cWe want to protect athletes\u2019 brain health and I believe everyone involved in athletics wants that. There is no advantage in having an athlete who is beaten up and can\u2019t sustain a high level of performance. We want to protect against the effects of head injury wherever it occurs. We\u2019re concerned about soldiers, traffic accidents, domestic abuse. This is a set of lessons that will have wide implications in society.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Ann
Ann McKee, a MED professor of neurology and pathology, is director of BU\u2019s CTE Center and has been studying the brains of people found to have CTE for more than eight years.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Stern noted that the new study will build on the groundbreaking work of MED professor of neurology and pathology Ann McKee<\/a>, director of the CTE Center and associate director of BU\u2019s Alzheimer\u2019s Disease Center<\/a>\u00a0(ADC), who first identified the telltale mark of CTE\u2014tiny tangles of a protein called tau, clustered around blood vessels\u2014in the dissected brain of a boxer who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer\u2019s disease.<\/p>\n

McKee, who oversees the ADC Neuropathology Core\u2019s Brain Bank<\/a> and has studied the brains of more than 200 people found to have CTE, gave the group an overview of her eight years of research into CTE. \u201cWe know this is a very biased sample,\u201d she said. \u201cYou can\u2019t take anything from these numbers in an absolute sense. But if this were a rare disease, there\u2019s no way we could be this successful at brain collection. I couldn\u2019t just go out and say, \u2018I\u2019m going to look at some strange, unusual disease and collect 200 cases in seven years.\u2019 What this says is that this disease is much more common than we thought. Your study is going to show that.\u201d<\/p>\n

She showed a montage of the faces of dozens of athletes who have been found to have CTE over the years. \u201cThis is a study about people,\u201d she said. \u201cWe do this because we are speaking for those people who can\u2019t speak for themselves any longer. We tell their stories because people need to know.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Congressional investigation found last week that top NFL health officials had improperly pressured the NIH to remove Stern, who has been critical of the NFL, from the study. When the NIH refused, the NFL backed out of a signed agreement to pay for the study, according to the investigation by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. Stern has declined to comment, saying he prefers to focus on the important science.<\/p>\n

This BU Today<\/em> story was written by Sara Rimer.\u00a0 She can be reached at srimer@bu.edu<\/a>. Photos by Cydney Scott.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fifty scientists\u2014from BUSM and BUSPH, the Cleveland Clinic, the Banner Alzheimer\u2019s Institute, the Mayo Clinic, Brigham and Women\u2019s Hospital, and other major institutions around the country\u2014launched their landmark study aimed at diagnosing CTE during life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":903,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[91,90],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33737"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/903"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33737"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33737\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33745,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33737\/revisions\/33745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}