Q & A with Dr Peter Cummings, co-author of “Brainwashed: The Bad Science Behind CTE and the Plot to Destroy Football”

Peter Cummings, MD1.   Chronic traumatic encephalopathy has been considered by many to be a distinct nosologic entity since 1928, when Dr. Harrison Martland published the article“Punch Drunk ” in JAMA. Do you believe that CTE is a distinct entity? If so, what, in your opinion, defines CTE?That ' s a good question! If you look at the totality of the literature in a historical context, you see the ' classic ' boxers neuropathological changes followed by the Omalu cases and then the McKee cases. Looking at all of these cases you can see that there is a wide spectrum of changes considered to be " CTE " . Right now I think all we can say is CTE is a pattern; we don ' t know what causes it and we don ' t know what it causes. There are cases of CTE-like pathology in people who have never been exposed to repetitive head trauma and never had a head injury. The answer is probably more complex than we ' re able to say right now. There are extremist views (such as that expressed in a 2015 BMJ editorial) that suggest CTE doesn ' t exist outside of boxing and CTE as described in football players is an American social phenomenon. There is a lot more work to do in this area and we discuss that in the book.2.   What’s your opinion of the work of Bennet Omalu as it pertains to CTE?It ' s certainly historically important. After all, it ' s what really launched this whole conversation. We talk a little bit about it in the book. I do think there is so...
Source: neuropathology blog - Category: Radiology Tags: trauma Source Type: blogs