(Image source: American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry ) BY STEVEN SPARKMAN ANCHOR JAMAL ANDRESS A new medical breakthrough could mark the beginning of an answer to the biggest problem in contact sports: brain injury caused by head trauma. It’s called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, and it’s become the big topic surrounding the NFL, fighting and other contact sports. Essentially, CTE is the chronic brain damage that results from a career full of blunt force traumas to the head, and it can cause cognitive impairments, memory loss, aggressive behavior and depression. Images via Seattle Times , Denver Post , Video via ESPN ) Now for the first time, scientists at UCLA believe they’ve seen signs of CTE in living retired NFL players. ( Video via KDKA ) Before now, the only way to diagnose CTE was to examine a person’s brain after they had died. But if researchers are able to study the brains of living people and watch the disease develop, they may be able to eventually find a cure. The telltale sign of CTE is the buildup of a protein called tau. In the sports world, it’s a word commonly linked to tragedy. ( Images via Boston University ) “Now, if tau sounds familiar, that’s because it’s been found in the brains of several former NFL players: Dave Duerson, Ray Easterling, Junior Seau … who were diagnosed with CTE.” ( Video via CNN ) The UCLA scientists were able to look for tau using the same techniques used to look for Alzheimer’s: injecting people with a radioactive marker and looking for it on a PET scan. And they found it: higher-than-normal tau in all five former NFL players in the initial study. Such a dramatic result could be the start of big changes in contact sports. ( Via UCLA ) Last year, when the study was just getting underway, an article for Deadspin explored the possibilities of a reliable tau test — yearly brain scans, new avenues for research — all with the same goal: early detection, so players know when to stop. That’s still a long way off, though. There are still problems, like the small size of the study or the fact that the test can’t tell the difference between tau and the plaques that cause Alzheimer’s. Plus according to the New York Times , we just don’t know enough about CTE yet. “It may take years and perhaps decades for doctors to determine how much of a role head hits and brain trauma have in patients with C.T.E., as opposed to one’s genetic predisposition and other health maladies like heart disease. But the study is a first step...”