A small study raises more concern about the long-term consequences of brain injuries suffered by thousands of soldiers - suggesting they may be at risk of developing the same degenerative brain disease as some retired football players.
Veterans' brain injuries linked to those seen in athletes
Cause of injury, whether a blast or repeated blows, doesn't matter - it can trigger the same disease-causing process.
May 16, 2012 at 10:02PM
Autopsies of four young veterans found the earliest signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, in their brain tissue, Boston researchers reported Wednesday.
They compared the brain tissue of some of the youngest athletes ever found with signs of early CTE, in their teens and 20s, and concluded the abnormalities were nearly identical.
"It's very distinctive," said Dr. Lee Goldstein of Boston University, who led the study with Dr. Ann McKee of the VA New England Healthcare System. "You don't see this in normal individuals."
The research suggests that the cause of the injury, whether a blast or repeated blows, doesn't matter - it can trigger the same disease-causing process, said McKee, who has long studied the athlete connection.
Further experiments with mice showed that a single blast, equivalent to a roadside bomb, was enough to start the damage - offering a model to help scientists better understand these wounds and perhaps how to treat them, the team reported in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
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