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LONDON: Scientists studying the damaged brain of boxers and other sportsmen have discovered essential information about a head injury-related illness called "drunkenness syndrome" that could help develop new diagnoses and treatments for Alzheimer's disease .
The syndrome, also known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), is badociated with repeated blows to the head and causes a type of dementia similar to Alzheimer's, which is characterized by behavioral changes, confusion and a loss of memory.
CTEs can reach people practicing contact sports such as boxing, rugby, football and football, but can not currently be diagnosed until after death, because brain tissue must be collected and badyzed to confirm the presence of the disease.
Like Alzheimer's, a disease that decays the brain and affects more than 50 million people worldwide, CTE is characterized by an abnormal accumulation of certain proteins in the brain. One of these, the tau, forms filaments that agglutinate in the cells.
In this study published Wednesday in the journal Nature, researchers from the British Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) of the Medical Research Council were able to detail the atomic structures of abnormal tau filaments in the CTE.
"Our new knowledge of these structures could help diagnose ETC in living patients by developing tracer compounds that specifically bind to CTE tau filaments," said Michel Goedert, LMB researcher who led the study.
The research involved scientists extracting tau filaments in the brains of three people with CTE post mortem – a former professional football player and two former professional boxers.
The filaments were then imaged using a technique called cryo-electronic microscopy. The team found that while the tau structures of the three CTE patients were identical, they were also different from those observed in Alzheimer's.
This could in the future help doctors distinguish between different forms of dementia when diagnosing patients, she added, but also to better understand how and why tau forms clumps and folds. specific to the disease.
"We do not yet know the chemical nature of these molecules, but we think that they may play a role in the badembly of tau protein into filaments, and that their abundance could explain why some people develop a CTE. and no others, "said Sjors Scheres. who co-directed the work.
He added that the next step in the research will be to identify these molecules and to understand more about their role in the formation of tau protein.
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