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Years of hits to the head prime the brain for decline

Repetitive head impacts trigger neuronal loss and disrupt blood vessels and immune cells long before the accumulation of neurotoxic tau protein.
By
  1. Adam Bachstetter

    1. Adam Bachstetter is at the Spinal Cord and Brain Injury Research Center, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky 40536, USA, and in the Department of Neuroscience, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky, USA.

  2. Josh Morganti

    1. Josh Morganti is at the Sanders-Brown Center on Aging, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky 40536, USA, and in the Department of Neuroscience, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky, USA.

Sustained blows to the head over many years are increasingly being recognized as a serious health risk that affects contact-sport athletes1, military veterans and people who have experienced long-term domestic violence. Writing in Nature, Butler et al.2 investigate the little-understood consequences of repetitive head impacts (RHIs) on the cellular networks that underlie normal brain function.

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Nature 647, 48-49 (2025)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-02820-3

References

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Competing Interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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