History of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy

Abstract

The long-term effects of repetitive head impacts have been recognized for close to a century. What is now referred to as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) was first described by Martland in 1928 in a series of boxers. Over the years, several important articles were published, including Critchley's 1957 report where he introduced the term “chronic traumatic encephalopathy,” Robert's study in 1969 which provided evidence of the prevalence of neurological impairment in retired fighters, and Corsellis' initial description of the pathology of CTE. However, what brought public attention to the issue of CTE in sports were the postmortem findings of CTE pathology in professional American football players, initially reported by Omalu and subsequently in a large series by McKee. There is now standardization of pathological criteria for CTE and recognition that it can be seen across all activities that involve repetitive head impacts.

Neuropathology in chronic traumatic encephalopathy: a systematic review of comparative post-mortem histology literature

“…This argument essentially questions whether earlier studies investigating dementia pugilistica were sufficiently detailed for the cases to be considered as “modern” CTE, given the different methods of identifying and describing pathologies compared to the criteria used today [ 57 ]. At this stage, there appears to be limited evidence supporting a distinction between the two diseases, and as such, the terms ‘dementia pugilistica’ and ‘CTE’ are widely considered to represent the same disease [ 20 , 39 , 57 ]. Therefore, both terms were included when searching for literature in this review.…”

“…This acknowledgement that a broad range of head injury exposure sources are associated with neurodegeneration fuelled the adoption of the term ‘chronic traumatic encephalopathy’ in modern literature. It is widely considered that these two terms describe equivalent neuropathology and the term ‘dementia pugilistica’ is therefore historically relevant to any literature survey of CTE neuropathology et al [ 20 , 39 , 57 ].…”

Management of Neuropsychiatric Symptoms for Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy

“…Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is a neurodegenerative disease linked to repeated head injury and is associated with neurological and psychological deficits including abnormalities in cognition, mood, behavior, and movement [1][2][3]. CTE was initially observed in professional boxers but has since been reported in athletes in other contact sports (such as soccer, football, and rugby) and people prone to repeat mild head trauma such as veterans experiencing blast injury, physical abuse victims, and epilepsy patients [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. In recent years, growing media attention has raised awareness for chronic traumatic encephalopathy and the potential consequences of repeat head injuries [12][13][14][15][16][17][18].…”