Tau protein shows up in the brain in other neurodegenerative diseases, but only in this unique, tangled pattern in CTE.
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Tau is a microtubule-associated protein.
It lines up on the inside
of the nerve cell and stabilizes the nerve cell.
It's important for regulating the nerve cell.
Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy
is a neurodegenerative disorder,
so it's a disease where the brain starts
to deteriorate, and as it deteriorates it
builds up huge amounts of this protein in the form of
what's called neurofibrillary tangle.
So they're inclusions inside nerve cells, and they look
sort of like skeins of yarn or like tangles.
That's why their name is that.
In CTE, you see tangles, these
tau-containing tangles, in a very unique pattern
throughout the brain.
There are other diseases that have tau protein, like Alzheimer's disease,
or even some other diseases, but not in this pattern.
This is a very unique and distinctive pattern.
Produced by Noel Gunther and Brian King, BrainLine.
Ann McKee, MD is the chief neuropathologist for the Framingham Heart Study (FHS) and the Boston University-based Centenarian Study, where ongoing surveillance of the FHS and centenarian participants will determine the incidence and type of dementia in persons in the ninth through the eleventh decades of life. She is also the chief neuropathologist for the Boston-based Veterans Administration Medical Centers and for the Sports Legacy Institute.
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