CTE has no distinct biomarkers and doesn't involve any structural damage that's visible to any of our current imaging capabilities.
this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2025
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How is it diagnosed post mortem? Does a human being have to pull the brain out and look through a magnifying glass?
In short, yes. Of course, they have to dissect the brain first.
We can’t see Alzheimer’s either
What is a CTE?
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy.
It's a summation of low grade damage over years and years from activities like football, rugby, hockey. Physical evidence requires an autopsy or maybe tracking changes in the brain over years (which no NFL player watching out for his paycheck is going to want to do).
That's not to say there won't be a way to detect it in still-live people in the future. CTE is still "new" in the context of medicine, which moves at glacial paces.