The collection of donated brains is a remarkable asset for researchers seeking ways to treat devastating neurological disorders such as Huntington’s disease, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, stroke, motor neurone disease - and now, CTE.
The University of Auckland’s Professor Maurice Curtis contributed to the journal article and told The Front Page that this most recent example shows there are modifiable risk factors.
“There’s a whole lot of things that you can’t change easily about your risk for getting Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s disease, for instance,” Curtis said.
“But this is one where you can make some changes. You can decide that you’ve had a few too many head knocks or concussions that mean you’ll slow down or do things that are less hard on your brain so that’s important,” he said.
His colleague, Dr Helen Murray, said CTE is not necessarily about the number of concussions you have had, but the number of impacts.
“You can have all sorts of impacts during training or a game where you have collisions and the head moves quite sharply. The brain is accelerating, decelerating inside the skull and that can cause microscopic damage,” Murray said.
There is a range of research showing how we can make a difference, Curtis said, like people starting to play contact sports later in life.
“So rather than starting when they’re 9, which is what this recent case shows, if the individual starts [playing] tackle sports a bit later, then that seems to have a better outcome or lower risk of developing CTE.
“It might be in the future medication or treatment that can be taken when somebody has recently experienced these repetitive head injuries.”
While the world waits for such medical breakthroughs, the researchers suggest it might be time to look at age restrictions when it comes to contact sports.
“I think it has to be one of the things that gets factored in,” Curtis said. “Anything that can reduce the number of head knocks that a person receives will be good.”
Murray agreed, saying we need to look at anything that reduces the exposure to those sorts of impacts that are going to move the brain violently.
“Can we delay contact training or activities so that you’re getting less exposure over your lifetime to those sorts of impacts that can accumulate? By starting contact [sports] later, that’s potentially five or so more years of less exposure than someone who had started earlier,” she said.
Listen to the full episode to hear more about CTE and what research is being done.
The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am. The podcast is presented by Chelsea Daniels, an Auckland-based journalist with a background in world news and crime/justice reporting who joined NZME in 2016.
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