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Traumatic brain injury (TBI) and related neurodegeneration among athletes and military personnel is garnering more attention from the media, from the American Academy of Neurology (see its position statement on sports that involve intentional trauma to the brain) and from neuroscientists who study chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE; JW Neurol Feb 14 2012). CTE, a heterogeneous clinical syndrome characterized by changes in cognition and behavior, is a progressive tauopathy with neurofibrillary tangles like those in Alzheimer disease (AD), albeit distinct in their cellular and regional distribution in the nervous system.
To better characterize CTE, researchers conducted autopsy studies of 84 men and 1 woman who had histories of repetitive m…