Experimental PET tracer finds CTE in former football player: Mt. Sinai researchers

In an imaging first, researchers at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York have found chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), at the center of the NFL’s concussion controversy, on a live, retired player, rather through a postmortem exam after death. The team, which conducted a “proof-of-concept” study, relied on an experimental agent known as Avid 1451.

“This could enable diagnosis during life and could identify potential subjects for anti-CTE drugs that are now being developed,” Sam Gandy, M.D., Ph.D., associate director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at Mount Sinai and director of the Center for Cognitive Health and NFL Neurological Care Program at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, told HCB News. “We found a brain scan pattern in a patient with clinical CTE that closely resembled the pattern that pathologists have seen at autopsy.” Read more.