SAN JOSE: Traumatic brain injury leads to the disruption of scaffolding structures in the neurons.
An experimental treatment helps restore normal brain structure and function in mice that have sustained severe concussions, and could lead to a drug that would do the same in humans, according to new research.
The brains of people who suffer from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects people such as boxers and football players with a history of repetitive hard hits to the head, are characterized by fibrous tangles of a protein called tau. It is not known how traumatic brain injury leads to these tangles, which are also found in the brains of people who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease.
Now researchers say they have identified a precursor to the tangles—a misshapen form of tau that appears in the brains of mice shortly after a blow to the head—and have shown that it can be eliminated by a protein, called an antibody, that binds to the misshapen tau and marks it for destruction by the body’s mechanism for clearing damaged or unneeded proteins…