I found this interesting article on how past head trauma’s can be mistaken for ALS. Read the excerpt below from MedPage Today, to read the full article Click Here.
By: John Gever, Senior Editor, MedPage Today
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For the first time, researchers have found pathological evidence that repetitive head trauma — such as that experienced by football players — may result in a motor neuron disease similar to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or "Lou Gehrig’s disease."
The evidence, a unique pattern of protein deposits, was found during autopsy studies of brains from 12 professional athletes who had played violent contact sports — including three athletes diagnosed with motor neuron diseases before their deaths — according to Ann C. McKee, MD, of Boston University, and colleagues.
While extensive brain deposits of a DNA-binding protein named TDP-43 as well as neurofibrillary tau protein were found in 10 of the cases, the tau proteins discovered in the three motor neuron disease cases wereclearly dissimilar from those seen in sporadic ALS patients, McKee and co-authors wrote online in the September issue of the Journal of Neuropathology and Experimental Neurology.
The deposits of the TDP-43 and tau proteins, found post-mortem in numerous regions of 10 of the pro athletes’ brains provided "the first pathological evidence that repetitive head trauma experienced in collision sports might be associated with the development of a motor neuron disease," the researchers commented.
Previous studies had been contradictory as to whether repeated head trauma may cause ALS, the most common and familiar form of motor neuron disease.
But the researchers suggested that many former athletes diagnosed with ALS after suffering repeated blows to the head may actually have a different type of motor neuron disease.
Their article did not mention baseball legend Lou Gehrig, the most famous ALS victim. But a New York Times reporter coaxed McKee into suggesting that Gehrig may have been among those misdiagnosed — even though, as a first baseman, he did not routinely experience violent collisions. (He was, however, beaned at least twice during his 14-year career with the New York Yankees.)
The 12 athletes in the post-mortem study included seven professional football players, four boxers, and one hockey player. Their ages at death ranged from 42 to 85.
McKee and colleagues found TDP-43 primarily in the frontal and temporal cortex, medial temporal lobe, basal ganglia, diencephalon, and brainstem in 10 of the brains. Inclusions and neurites containing the protein were also present in the spinal cord in the three individuals with motor neuron disease.
The latter group also showed motor neuron loss and degeneration of the corticospinal tract, and extensive distribution of abnormal tau protein, the researchers indicated.
Clinical histories of the three — two of whom were former pro football players, the other a boxer — included upwards of 10 concussions in one, three to four in another, and "many" in the third.
One had a sibling with "probable ALS" but otherwise the trio appeared to have no other risk factors for neurological disease other than their sports injuries.
The study also included analyses of brain sections from 12 neurologically normal individuals and 12 patients with sporadic ALS whose ages at death were similar to the athletes.’
Four of the normal controls showed a few tau-positive neurites in the ventral horn. No signs of TDP-43 or other pathology like that of the athletes were seen in any of the normal controls.
All the ALS patients, on the other hand, had TDP-43 in their brains. But unlike the athletes with motor neuron disease, only one of the sporadic ALS patients showed abnormal tau, and it was in the form of "rare" neurites, McKee and colleagues indicated.
Click HERE for the original article.
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