The New Dementia Attacking Athletes

Reported November 18, 2011

BOSTON, MA ( Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Super Bowl champs and NFL hall of famers are a few of the athletes who’ll be part of a major study after they’re dead. A former pro-wrestling star who helped get the NFL’s concussion policy changed ,wants to treat and prevent a form of dementia called CTE.

From high school to Harvard to the NFL, Isaiah Kaczyvenski’s life was football. Now, the former linebacker who still suffers the effects of at least five concussions has committed to help a new team. One day Isaiah’s brain will be in the brain bank. This is where neuropathology Dr. Ann Mckee examines the donated brains of deceased athletes.

“Headaches, sleeplessness, not feeling right emotionally,” Isaiah told Ivanhoe.

Looking for signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, it's believed to be caused by repeat concussions or other brain trauma.

"You’d compare it [brain] to some older person say 70's and 80's with severe end stage dementia," Ann McKee, M.D., a professor of neurology & pathology & laboratory medicine and director of the Neuropathology Core, explained.
Dr. McKee examined the brain of a professional boxer with some temporal atrophy, that’s too small.

Center for the study of traumatic encephalopathies, Chris Nowinski recruits athletes to donate their brains. The former professional wrestler is also Isaiah’s college teammate.

“This is the only type of dementia that exists that’s preventable,” Chris Nowinski explained. CTE has been spotted in deceased college and high school athletes. Nowinski says to help prevent it we need to limit what young athletes do on the field.

“And people are going to fight like heck to say should a 6 -year-old be heading a soccer ball,” Nowinski said.

Isaiah knows he’s at risk for CTE and that when his brain gets here it could prevent the next generation from developing it.

More than 500 living athletes have agreed to donate their brains to the research.to data; and.nearly 100 brains have been examined at the brain bank. More than 50 have been diagnosed with CTE. Chris and Isaiah have started going to the Super Bowl every year to recruit NFL players to donate their brains. Dr. Mckee says right now there’s also a big need for brains from non-athletes to help with her research.