Animal model of repetitive mild traumatic brain injury for human traumatic axonal injury and chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

Abstract

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is a chronic neurodegenerative disease featured with tauopathy. CTE is tightly related with repetitive mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), which is interchangeably known as concussion (McKee et al., 2009, 2013). This disease is differentiated by neuropathological features from other neurological diseases that involve tau protein aggregation and tangle formation abnormalities like Alzheimer's disease (AD), frontotemporal dementia, and Parkinsonism linked to chromosome 17 (FTDP-17). The differentiation of CTE from other neurodegenerative diseases provides helps on exploring the mechanism of etiology and seeking potential treatment for this disease. Repetitive mTBI is usually evident in civilians participating in contact sports and in military personnel engaging in combat. Due to the number of individuals partaking in these high-risk environments, the general public concern has heightened in concordance to the reveal of many new CTE cases. Despite increased awareness, the mechanisms of CTE are still unknown and there are no effective therapies to help slow the progression of the devastating disease. The heterogeneity of human CTE cases and the complexity of patients’ backgrounds make it difficult for scientists to specify the links between mTBI and CTE using epidemiological or clinical approaches; appropriate animal models are effective in exploring cause-and-effect relationships.