Chris Eitzmann excelled at everything until he didn't.
In 2000 he was invited to the New England training camp. After retiring from football in 2002, Eitzmann got an M.B.A. and worked at several big financial firms in Boston.
Chris began a descent that is familiar to former football players afflicted with C.T.E., a brain disease caused by repeated blows to the head.
Chris drank to excess after quitting exercising and lifting weights. Chris's behavior became more alarming after they moved back to Nebraska. He would go missing for long periods of time. She said he would often drive drunk.
Chris Eitzmann died of alcohol poisoning at the age of 44. He was found to have C.T.E., a disease that can only be diagnosed posthumously. The final years of her husband's life would have changed a lot if he had known he had the disease.
She said that clarity and understanding would have been valuable if he knew that it was something.
Without treatment options, a C.T.E. diagnosis could not provide clarity for former players like Eitzmann. It could help current players make risk assessments about when to stop playing tackle football.
A test for C.T.E. in the living is being developed because of recent discoveries.
The only way to diagnose C.T.E. is by staining brain samples and examining them under microscopes.
There could be a test for C.T.E. in a couple of years, according to a leading researcher. The future of testing for C.T.E. hinges on finding a way to identify it without using brain samples. Scientists in multiple research institutes worldwide are working to find a disease marker that can be seen in samples of blood, saliva or spinal fluid.
Alzheimer's diagnostics have advanced to the point at which blood tests are now on the market, and companies that have developed those tests are now looking to create a blood test for C.T.E.
The most comprehensive effort to develop a test for C.T.E. in the living started in 2015.
120 former N.F.L. players, 60 former college players and 60 people with no history of repetitive head impacts are being tracked by the N.I.H.
The participants are undergoing follow up exams to see if they have any C.TE. symptoms or if they have progressed, and researchers hope that changes in their tests will help them identify markers for C.T.
The lead investigator for the project said that he believes we are closer to having fluid markers and blood-based markers that can be used to diagnose C.T.E.
There was a breakthrough in the search for C.T.E. biomarkers in the year 2019.
The group published the findings of their study, which showed that the abnormal threads inside of cells were visible, giving hope that they could be tested.
Positron emission tomography, or PET, is a test that uses a radioactive compound to create images of the brain and other parts of the body.
Researchers are trying to find out if radio tracers can bind to the brain inflammation associated with concussions and other head trauma.
Neil Vasdev, a radiochemist at the University of Toronto and the director of the CAMH Brain Health Imaging Centre, said that they are getting very close to advancement of new radio tracers in humans to image the tau that is more prevalent in C.T.E.. We should be able to develop a test for C.T.E. in the living in two to five years.
Doctors leading C.T.E. research have said for a long time that a diagnostic test for the living was a decade away. A change in forecast for research that is complicated by a relatively small sample size and the need for long-range studies is marked by the expectation that the finish line is moving up. C.T.E. could be diagnosed before its symptoms are apparent if it's identified on a PET Scan.
It should be possible to diagnose these deposits at an early stage. People with deposits in their brains need to be identified before they have symptoms.
Gil Rabinovici is a doctor at the University of California, San Francisco. A number of former N.F.L. players have C.T.E.tau in their brain. The signal from those radio transmitters has been weak.
He said it was difficult because he didn't know if they had C.T.E.
There are more similarities between Alzheimer's and C.T.E. than there are differences, so researchers can use some of the same techniques for testing.
He thinks we don't need to start from scratch. I am cautiously optimistic that we will find a trace that works.
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