Kronik Travmatik Ensefalopati/Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is a neurodegenerative disease seen in people who have undergone multiple head trauma. It occurs as a result of repeated extremely powerful blows rather than a single trauma to the head. Although these accumulations begin to occur shortly after the trauma, symptoms such as memory loss, dementia, confusion, depression, and behavioral problems appear within (a) few years. It was first described by the Nigerian-based American neuropathologist Bennet Omalu in 2002 after an autopsy to the Pittsburgh Steelers American Football team player Mike Webster, who was a former American National Football League (NFL) player and ended his life by committing suicide. Omalu observed that brain autopsy of Mike Webster revealed amyloid plaques and excessive tau protein accumulation. Tau protein is thought to occur as a result of concussion caused by the blow to the head in athletes exposed to recurrent head trauma. In histopathological preparations, it was observed that the neurons in the frontal, parietal and temporal neocortex regions had decreased, and amyloid plaque formation and tau proteins had accumulated. Atrophy has been detected in global cerebral areas such as basal ganglia, thalamus, hippocampus, amygdala, mammary and lateral geniculate bodies. It has been shown that the pathology is widely distributed deep within the cerebral sulcus. Excess of Tau protein causes damage to brain tissues, as in Alzheimer's patients. In CTE, symptoms may appear just a few weeks after concussion, and may manifest themselves decades later. The aim of this review is to draw attention to the CTE picture, which may cause symptoms such as behavioral changes, memory loss, unnecessary aggression, depression and increased suicidal tendency in individuals exposed to head trauma and bring the issue to the agenda of sports people.