MD students and faculty publish review on TBI/CTE and Alzheimer’s disease

Fourth-year MD students Aikaterini Katramadou and Eva Sonja Bender have co authored a review article on traumatic brain injury (TBI)/chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) and Alzheimer’s disease, under the supervision of Professor Dimitrios N. Kanakis.

The paper, titled ‘From Traumatic Brain Injury to Alzheimer’s Disease: Multilevel Biomechanical, Neurovascular, and Molecular Mechanisms with Emerging Therapeutic Directions’, was published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences.

The review summarises current knowledge on how head injuries such as concussions or repeated blows can contribute to later development of conditions like Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) and Alzheimer’s disease. It brings together findings from biomechanics, vascular biology, and molecular neuroscience to describe how physical trauma may trigger long term degenerative changes in the brain and outlines emerging directions for treatment and prevention.

The authors note that, although links between TBI and later neurodegenerative disease are increasingly reported, there are still important gaps in understanding cause and effect relationships and in designing effective therapies, highlighting the need for better experimental models that more closely reflect human brain injury.