LAist: What a New Study on CTE in NFL Players Reveals About the Brain
LAist program AirTalk recently interviewed Yafa Minazad, DO, a neurologist at Huntington Health, a Cedars-Sinai affiliate, about a study examining chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE)—a degenerative brain disease linked to repeated head impacts or concussions—in former professional football players.
The study found that at least 25% of NFL players who died over a six-year period had evidence of CTE.
Minazad, who was not involved in the study, told AirTalk host Larry Mantle that CTE develops when the brain receives repetitive impacts without time to recover, allowing damage to accumulate. To help her patients better understand what happens in this situation, she compares the brain to copper wires.
“The brain is made of 86 billion of very, very, very tiny wires,” she said. “And if you keep taking them, and you bang on them over time, you cause these microscopic damages in these wires, and they will not be able to function.”
Because all brain activity depends on electrical signals between neurons, microscopic damage can disrupt thinking, memory, speech and personality. Minazad told Mantle that symptoms can range from memory problems, cognitive issues and fogginess to severe mood disorders.
She said that prevention, early recognition and better diagnostic tools are essential. She also urged coaches and players to recognize symptoms quickly and give athletes time to heal.
Asked why some people develop symptoms of CTE early while others do not, Minazad told Mantle that the brain is like real estate.
“It’s location, location, location,” she said, explaining that the site, severity and number of impacts all shape which symptoms emerge.
Minazad encouraged anyone with a history of head injury to be evaluated by a physician. She noted that while CTE cannot currently be diagnosed in a living patient, tools such as neuropsychometric testing, MRI and electroencephalograms can establish a baseline and help guide rehabilitation.
“I don’t want this to come across as, we do not have any tools to manage or treat these patients,” she said. “They should get tested.”
Listen to the complete segment from LAist.