CHICAGO — A recent study by Northwestern Medicine has raised questions about the relationship between contact sports and brain diseases such as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). The research analyzed 174 donated brains, including those from former high school and college football players.
“The long and short of it is no, this protein in this specific brain region is not increased in people who played football at the amateur level. It throws a little bit of cold water on the current CTE narrative,” said Dr. Rudolph Castellani, professor of pathology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
Published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, the study examined brain tissue from the Lieber Institute for Brain Development. Of the samples collected from older adult men with a median age of 65 at death, 48 had participated in football during their youth while 126 had no history of playing contact sports.
The researchers focused on a memory-related brain region called CA2 within the hippocampus, known to accumulate phosphorylated tau (p-tau) protein often present in neurodegenerative diseases. However, findings indicated that p-tau buildup was statistically associated with age rather than participation in contact sports.
“What’s novel here is a return to the null hypothesis — that there may be no link between repeated head injuries and p-tau buildup in this location,” Castellani noted.
The study highlights challenges in neurodegeneration research and calls for larger studies to understand how p-tau relates to aging and head injuries.
“Modern studies on CTE may be expanding the boundaries of what’s considered normal variability in the human brain,” Castellani added.
The study titled “Postmortem tau in the CA2 region of the hippocampus in older adult men who participated in youth amateur American-style football” urges further critical evaluation by scientists regarding assumptions about neurodegenerative disease.