Researchers aim to diagnose CTE in living athletes
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a progressive neurodegenerative disease, has often been linked to repeated head injuries and contact sports.
Currently, CTE can only be diagnosed after a patient's death. The Concussion Legacy Foundation wants to collaborate with top academic research centers to change that.
Led by the Boston University CTE Center, researchers are looking to recruit 350 men aged 50 and older — including 225 former college and professional football players, 75 control participants and 50 people with Alzheimer's disease — for DIAGNOSE CTE Research Project-II.
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Researchers will examine new potential disease biomarkers to help doctors 'accurately diagnose' CTE in living patients. The findings are also meant to help doctors learn how to differentiate CTE from similar diseases like Alzheimer's.
Participants will join one of five Alzheimer's disease research centers, where they will undergo neurological, cognitive and neuropsychiatric exams, along with multimodal brain imaging, tau PET scans, and blood tests.
'It will fill two missing links in the literature preventing us from developing definitive diagnostic criteria for CTE during life,' said Michael Alosco, associate professor of neurology at Boston University. 'First, we need longitudinal studies that include brain donation. Second, we need to better compare people at risk for CTE to other disease groups.'
The study will only include male players; however, researchers said the findings will 'benefit all groups at risk for CTE, including male and female contact sports athletes and military veterans.'
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Former Seattle Seahawks quarterback Matt Hasselbeck has been named an ambassador for the study.
On 'Morning in America' on Friday, he expressed confidence in the study's wide-reaching impact across all sports.
'I think that the difference here is that we haven't had a test subject of people, mainly football players. In this case, a contact sport that we know there is head trauma, head collision. But I think this will affect every other sport,' he said. 'I think that football will lead the way, but I think we're going to learn a lot, and it's going to help everybody.'
Former football players and men with no history of contact sports interested in participating in the study are encouraged to sign up for the Concussion Legacy Foundation Research Registry at CLFResearch.org.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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