Test developed for deer may help TBI patients

A test that was initially developed by wildlife disease experts from Colorado State University may help to identify the onset of brain disorders, including concussion-related trauma, in humans.

According to an article on the Innovation News website, the test was created to detect early-stage chronic wasting disease (CWD) in deer.

“In a sign of its potential significance, the research is funded with a $850,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Defense. The agency hopes to find better ways to detect and prevent concussion-related brain injuries, such as chronic traumatic encephalopathy, in U.S. soldiers exposed to munitions blasts in the field,” the article reads. “Such use of a diagnostic test designed for deer is possible because CWD is in a family of neurodegenerative ailments called prion diseases, characterized by protein misfolding that triggers a cascade of ultimately fatal brain damage.”

Researchers say that the misfolding in prion disease is nearly identical to cellular malfunction that occurs in humans who experience a concussion or chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

“In the last five years, there’s been an interest in applying this new technology to other neurological diseases,” said  Davin Henderson , a researcher in the Hoover Laboratory. “Chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, is similar to prion disease.”

CTE is a progressive degenerative disease of the brain found in athletes (and others) with a history of repetitive brain trauma, including symptomatic concussions as well as asymptomatic subconcussive hits to the head. CTE has been known to affect boxers and other contact sport enthusiast since the 1920s.

“The CSU team is collaborating on the study with the Center for Cognitive Neurology at New York University’s Langone Medical Center, which will provide tissue samples from patients with dementia who donated these tissues to science,” the article reads. “CSU is renowned for its research breakthroughs on chronic wasting disease, a contagious neurological disease that affects deer, elk and moose: CWD was first identified as a fatal wasting syndrome of mule deer – and as a prion disorder – at CSU research facilities. CSU Professor  Terry Spraker  also first discovered chronic wasting disease in a captive research herd of elk in Colorado in the 1970s.”

Researchers say that the protein they’re studying is rich in the brain and performs tasks not fully understood, but when it misfolds, it somehow seduces other proteins to misfold with it, which eventually spreads into the brain tissue and can damage the nerve cells in the brain.

“The test that detects CWD at very low levels in the urine, saliva or feces of deer, elk and moose may also be used to detect one of several misfolded proteins found in people with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, traumatic brain injury and other similar diseases,” the article reads. “Researchers and clinicians are also interested in learning more about the connection between traumatic brain injury and short-term and long-term disorders resulting from concussion.”