Abstract #3003

Decreased Brain Temperature in Former NFL Athletes

Tyler Chazan Starr^1,2, Molly Charney^1,2, Michael Alosco³, Jeffrey Qu^1,2, Eduardo Coello^1,2, Huijun Liao^1,2, Inga Koerte^4,5,6, David Kaufmann^4,6, Martha Shenton^1,4,5,7, Robert Stern³, and Alexander Lin^1,2,4

¹Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA, United States, ²Center For Clinical Spectroscopy, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA, United States, ³Boston University, Boston, MA, United States, ⁴Psychiatry Neuroimaging Laboratory, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA, United States, ⁵Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, United States, ⁶Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, Germany, ⁷VA Boston Healthcare System, Brockton, MA, United States

Currently, Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) is only diagnosed post-mortem, therefore advanced imaging has an opportunity to identify biomarkers for this disease. This study’s goal is to use Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MRS) and MR Thermography (MRT) to measure cerebral temperature differences between retired former NFL players (n = 50) suspected of CTE and controls (n = 13). The NFL players were found to have lower brain temperature than the controls (p = 0.0340). These finding suggest there is a metabolic difference between those suspected of CTE and healthy controls.

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