Similarities Found in Soldiers and Athletes Suffering from Brain Injuries

July 07, 2012 (Press-News.org) According to a study recently published in Science Translational Medicine, football players and soldiers are likely to experience the same serious brain condition, chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) when they are struck in the head.

What is CTE?

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) occurs when patients suffer from repetitive mild traumas to the head. Often seen in boxers and other professional athletes, CTE can result in neurological problems, memory loss, dementia and depression. Symptoms of CTE include irritability, headaches and problems with sleep.

Recent CTE Study

The researchers' choice to look at the brains of veterans and professional athletes may sound random, but there are several similarities between the two groups that actually will help researchers understand CTE. For example, the blows to the head that athletes experience on the football field have similar effects on the brain that soldiers experience when they're wounded on the battlefield.

Also, the effects of these injuries on the lives of football players and soldiers are similar. Often depressed as a result of their brain injuries, there have been reports of veterans and football players committing suicide after developing CTE.

As a result of these similarities, researchers at Boston University School of Medicine compared the brain tissue of athletes -- who doctors suspected were suffering from CTE before they died -- to the brain tissue of veterans who died suddenly after suffering from a brain trauma. In addition, researchers looked at the brains of young people who had died suddenly and did not have a history of brain trauma.

The researchers found that the athletes and veterans had the exact same brain abnormalities, whereas the other brains that were studied did not. In order to find further evidence that the brain injuries were caused by blows to the head, such as those that soldiers may experience in the military theater, researchers exposed a group of mice to blast winds that mimic the impact of an improvised explosive device (IED) that servicemembers are often exposed to on the battlefield.

Although they admit that the size of the mice's brain compared to the human brain makes a direct comparison impossible, researchers found that the mice in the study also had similar injuries to their brain tissue.

Article provided by Friedman, Hirschen & Miller, LLP
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