From Nausea to Plaques and Tangles: Traumatic Brain Injuries and Alzheimer’s Disease
You might have suffered a concussion playing football as a high school or college student, and because you felt nauseous and dizzy, you rested for a few days, just as your doctor advised. Those few days passed and you felt like your old self again, ready to return to the field.
Fifty years later, your family is concerned about your memory: you don’t know what month it is, and you can’t recall the conversation you had with your son two hours earlier. Your wife eventually takes you to a neurologist, who diagnosis you with Alzheimer’s disease. You’re surprised. After all, you have no family history of Alzheimer’s, and you’ve worked hard to keep your brain sharp: you’ve been an avid reader and crossword puzzle fanatic for years. The neurologist must be wrong, you think. Or maybe you haven’t considered the concussion you sustained half a century earlier.
A brain injury is a risk factor for Alzheimer’s. It’s possible that all it takes is one concussion. On autopsy, an Alzheimer’s brain reveals beta amyloid deposits – proteins that collect between nerve cells. Tau, tangled fibers of proteins, collects within the cells. As we age, it’s not unusual to expect protein build up within our brains, but in Alzheimer’s, they accrue in greater amounts, impeding communication between nerve cells, causing memory impairment and personality changes.
In autopsy studies of those who have died in the acute phase of a traumatic brain injury, researchers have found amyloid deposits in thirty percent of people, including children, and increased tau levels in the spinal fluid of those who died of a severe traumatic brain injury.
But studies have proven that amyloid is a mysterious protein as it relates to head trauma. Researchers have learned that individuals with mild cognitive deficits, who reported a history of brain trauma, showed brain changes consistent with Alzheimer’s. But those with no cognitive impairment, who also reported a history of brain trauma, did not show any changes.
So, at least there is hope – if you have suffered a brain injury, maybe you’ll be among the lucky and will escape the sticky plaques and fibrous tangles.
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