03 Dec 2012

Today, The New York Times and National Public Radio are running stories on a paper published online in the journal Brain as advance open access. In it, Ann McKee and colleagues at Boston University Medical Center detail neuropathology findings of the largest-ever series of brains from concussed athletes and military veterans. The paper proposes a staging system for chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), relating worsening symptoms experienced by the former players and soldiers to progressive tauopathy in their brains at their time of death. For extensive coverage not only of this study (ARF related news story), but also the broader context of emerging CTE research in which it is being conducted, see Gabrielle Strobel's series on CTE. McKee presented an even newer cut of the data published today in Brain at a recent CTE conference at the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health in Las Vegas (see ARF related conference series).—Gabrielle Strobel.