SIAP: CTE May Now Be Diagnosed in the Living

Yeah, the people starting the company say the product they want to create and sell will detect CTE. Just like every person who starts a company with a cancer drug says that the drug is going to cure cancer.
The biggest red flag for me is that Tau is a major protein in Alzheimer’s and many other tauopathys that have been studied for over 100 years, yet they are marketing it as a test for CTE and not for Alzheimer’s. They’re riding the media wave around CTE.
I️ don’t doubt that CTE is real. And that playing football is dangerous. But we are decades away from gaining any real understanding. And the thought that CTE is going to be easily diagnosable and kill football while these other huge neuro fields have no detection options is completely laughable.

It all depends on what they find. Perhaps the current data for CTE reflects cases where the analysis was done because people saw evidence of pathology in the players' behavior. Some people who play contact sports may show no CTE susceptibility. We could see continued existence of sports but with inevitably diminished on-field talent due to otherwise talented people screened out by CTE (and general concussion) risk. Then again, given our human propensity to flip out over outlier issues, even a 5% CTE risk among players might be enough for a moral panic shutdown of many contact sports. Good thing I like baseball too. In fact this might increase the talent pool for other sports with minimal CTE risk.

and could possibly save some people from suffering long term if they can catch it early and advise them to possibly quit a sport.  Now if they can find a way from blocking the protien from entering the brain they could possibly cure the disease.

This as equally (if actually applied properly - by actually testing a random sample of society) has the potential to prove that CTE is NOT related to contact sports.  Everything up to this point links this to contact sports, but it's conveniently omitted from the discussion that they aren't testing the brains of those who did not play contact sports to find out if it exists there, as well.  The jump to "this is only found in those who have played contact sports" isn't scientifically justified by the current data.

I'm concerned that I could have CTE, given that I played football from 4th-12th grade. I do not recall any concussions. I hope they figure this out sooner rather than later

Technological advancements in the medical arena always amaze me! I know that someday we will have a cure for most of what ails us.