95bFM Breakthrough made in the research of head trauma condition
March 25, 2025
Interview by Amani Sadique, adapted by Vivek Panchal
Recently, a breakthrough in understanding chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) was made at the University of Auckland’s Centre for Brain Research.
CTE is a neurodegenerative disease that progressively gets worse over time, causing the brain to shrink and eventually causing cell death, with the ailment usually developing as a result of repeated head trauma.
Symptoms are similar to dementia; emotional instability, mood swings, and effects on cognitive functioning.
Neuroscientists at the University of Auckland analysed donated brain tissue, mostly from former rugby players, to provide more information on how specific cells respond from repeated head damage.
Senior researcher a part of the the study at the University of Auckland, Dr Helen Murray, told 95bFM’s The Wire that this research has helped develop a deeper understanding of CTE.
“Up until this point, we have only really known about the diagnostic features of the disease.”
The standard pathology for this disease is finding a protein called Tau, which clumps around the blood vessels deep in the brain's folds and neurons. Currently, CTE can only be diagnosed in those who have passed away.
However, Murray says that as this research is still relatively new, it has been unclear what causes CTE to occur.
“Essentially what we found is that there's quite a specific pattern of inflammation that's occurring around blood vessels in this condition,” she says.
“So it gives us some more understanding of what might be going wrong in the brain in people who have this condition, and potentially some new avenues to try and diagnose it during life.”
The research uncovered inflammation occurs around the blood vessels when a person has this condition.
Murray says currently, it is hard to detect the disease through blood testing or MRI scans; therefore the study of this specific inflammation could provide new avenues to design better tools to aid in the diagnosis of this condition pre-death.
She says rugby players who have played the sport for multiple decades are particularly vulnerable to developing this condition due to the consistent head trauma they have faced in their sport.
However, Murray says work to diagnose CTE in living people may unveil more about the condition.
“Because we can't effectively diagnose it in living people, we don't know what other factors might be at play as well. So there could be other lifestyle factors that might contribute.”
“Until we can get a better diagnosis, we're not going to know for sure. And research into CTE is a relatively new science because we've only more recently been able to distinguish it from other neurodegenerative conditions.”
