Football season is again upon us! But as you cheer for your favorite team, did you know that football players may be at a greater risk for brain injury and trauma? Sam Gandy, a neurologist at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital, hopes to develop a more accurate radioactive tracer technique to uncover the truth.
Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) is a neurodegenerative disease linked to repetitive brain injury, with symptoms ranging from memory loss to mental instability. Diagnosable only after a patient has died, CTE is frequently found in the brains of deceased football players and raises controversy on the safety of football and other contact sports. Dr. Gandy hopes to detect CTE earlier in a living patient to find prevention methods and determine the real risk of CTE in sports.
