(CNN)Inflammation in the brain has been associated with neurodegernative diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, and a new study links it for the first time to chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE.
The researchers compared the brains of 48 former football players diagnosed with CTE with the brains of 18 players who didn't have the disease and those of 16 non-players. They found that those who had increased hits to the head, even though they hadn't been diagnosed with CTE, had increased inflammation. That inflammation increased with a longer time playing football and with CTE severity.
The brain is a unique organ, said Stein, in that it has its own inflammatory cells that act as a monitoring system. "These inflammatory cells are constantly migrating through the brain. Then, if there's an infection, they react quickly. Same with trauma: Inflammatory cells quickly migrate to the area of trauma and probably perform some protective mechanism." But in some brains, these inflammatory cells don't shut down, and inflammation persists. Eventually, Stein hopes studies like this can help develop tools to determine the degree of injury to the brain and when it's OK for players to return to the field. "The ultimate goal is to figure out which particularly inflammatory cells that are more problematic than others and then ultimately use drugs to prevent the disease." But he cautioned that the study was still very early.
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